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Che Chree-Fold Secret 


of the 


Holy Spirit. 


By James §. ‘MeGonkey. 


SECOND EDITION. 


30. ele . 


1897, 
Published by Fred. Kelker, 
P. ©. Box, 26, Harrisburg, Pa. 


Copyright, 1897, . 
BY FRED KELKER, 
Harrisburg, Pa. 


Che Secret of his n= 
coming. 


Union With Christ. 


This Jesus . . . having received 
of the Fatber the promise of the Holy 


Ghost. Acts ii. 32, 33. 
Sut of him are pe in Christ Jesus. 
Lk Cormaod: 


Gn whom . . . pe were sealed 


With the holy Spirit of promise. 
Eph. i. 13, 14, R. V. 


The Hbundant Life. 


‘‘T am come that they might have life, and that they 
might have it MORE ABUNDANTLY.’’—John x. 10. 


* * * * * * % 


S the west-bound traveler speeds over the 
Alleghenies, his watchful gaze can hardly — 

fail to note the gleaming surface of a little 
artificial lake whose azure-tinted waters, mirror- 
ing the skies above, add much to the beauty of 
the most celebrated curve in the main artery of 
the great railroad system which spans our native 
state. This lakelet, embosomed in the depths of 
the mountains, is the reservoir which furnishes 
water to a busy neighboring city, and is fed by 
a mountain stream of modest supply. In the 
drought of last summer the infilling stream dwin- 
dled to a tiny thread ; the waters of the reser- 
voir sank to their lowest limits ; and all the ills 
of a protracted water famine, with its constant 
menace to health and home, beset the city. The 
most rigideconomy was urged by the authorities; 
the water was cut off save for a few hours per 
day ; and the scant supply of precious fluid was 


8 THE SHORET OF HIS INCOMING. 


carefully husbanded against emergencies. Not 
a hundred miles from this city lies a smaller one, 
nestling also among the mountains. In its very 
center bursts forth a natural fountain of unlim- 
ited abundance and maryelous beauty. In the 
same summer of disastrous drought this famous 
spring, without abating one jot of its wondrous 
flow or sinking one inch below the lip of its en- 
circling embankment, furnished the thirsty city 
with fullest supply, and then still outflowed over 
its waste-weir a sparkling, leaping stream of 
unstinted copiousness, earning right royally the 
privilege not only of refreshing with its waters, 
but of christening with its own name the city 
of “ The Beautiful Fountain.” The larger city, 
in truth, had water. But the smaller one had it 
‘‘more abundantly.” The scanty rivulet that 
trickled into the reservoir was barely enough to 
save from keen thirst. But the living, bubbling 
fountain, pouring out its liquid wealth in prodi- 
gal flow for its native town, had left still enough 
to slake the thirst of a city many times the size 
of its greater neighbor. 

Even s0 is it with the life of the Holy Spirit 
in God’s children. Some have His indwelling life 
only as the trickling stream, with scarce enough 
to keep and refresh them in times of test and 
stress, and never knowing what His fullness 
means. Others there are in whom the words of 
Jesus are joyously fulfilled: ‘*I am come that 
they might have life, and that they might have 
it more ABUNDANTLY” (more ABOUNDINGLY). Not 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 9 


only are they filled with the Spirit in their own 
inner life, but they overflow in abundant, outgiv- 
ing blessing to the hungry and thirsty lives about 
them that seek to know the secret of their refresh- 
ing. Sorrow comes, but it cannot rob them of 
their great peace. Dark grow the days,but their 
child-like faith abounds moreand more. Heavily 
fall the afflictive blows but like the oil well which, 
under the blow of the explosive, gives forth a 
more abundant flow because of the very shatter- 
ing of its rocky reservoir, so their lives only pour 
out an ever increasing and enriching volume of 
blessing upon those about them. An unceasing 
stream of prayer flows from their hearts. Praise 
leaps as instinctively and artlessly from their — 
lips as glad song bursts from the soaring sky- 
lark. Trust has become a second nature: joy 
is its natural outcome; and ceaseless service 
springs not from the bondage of duty but as the 
gracious response of love. They are not like dry 
pumps, needing to be aided by others through 
impoured draughts of exhortation and stimulation 
ere they will give forth their scant supply. They 
are rather deep-driven artesian wells, spontane- 
ous, constant, spirit-flowing. In them the Mas- 
ter’s words have been fulfilled : ‘‘ The water which 
I shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life.” 

Such were the lives of the apostles after the 
eventful day of Pentecost; transformed from 
timid, self-seeking, hesitating followers to bold, 
sacrificing, heroic messengers of Jesus Christ ; 


10 THH SHORHT OF HIS INCOMING. 


preaching His gospel with wondrous power, joy, 
and effectiveness. Such was Stephen ‘‘ ruun of 
faith and the Holy Ghost ;” and Barnabas “‘ ruLL 
of the Holy Ghost and of faith.” The men 
chosen to wait on tables were “‘ ruL1 of the Holy 
Ghost.” Paul swept to and fro in his great mis- 
sionary journeys ‘‘ FILLED with the Holy Ghost.” 
Such was Charles Finney preaching the word of 
life with fiery earnestness born of a mighty FULL- 
NESS Of the Spirit. Such were Edwards, and 
Moody, and multitudes of others; and such an 
abundant life as this does God hold out to all 
His children as their birthright, their lawful in- 
heritance. In His picture of its precious fruit- 
age (Gal. v. 2%, 83), we see it to be a life of 
Abundant Love. 

See the apostles filled with burning zeal to 
give the gospel of Christ’s love to all Mark 
Stephen’s intense love for souls. Behold Peter’s 
glowing heart and fervent testimonies now well 
attesting his earnest assertion, ‘‘Yea Lord, thou 
knowest that I love thee.” Mark the man of 
Tarsus, consumed with such a love for dying men 
as naught but God could inspire, and none but God 
could surpass. His great throbbing heart is too 
small a fountain to contain ; his thrilling, burning 
words too weak a bridge to convey; his weak, 
toil-spent body too feeble a tabernacle to incar- 
nate all the fullness of his passionate love for 
souls. So too Brainerd toils, fasts, weeps and 
dies for his Indians, because of the divine Love 
within him. Judson is driven from the land of 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 11 


his choice; is baffled again and again in hisefforts 
to obtain a foothold in Burmah; languishes in 
prison amid unspeakable horrors and sufferings, 
yet the flame of Love never abates. Livingstone 
travels through pathless wilderness; endures 
untold hardships; is broken-hearted by the vision 
of the infamy and anguish of the slave traffic; 
yet, dying upon his knees in holy prayer, Love 
burns mere intensely than in the days of his 
youth. Paton exiles himself among cannibals ; 
faces difficulties that would daunt the most dar- 
ing; labors with patience, prays with mighty 
faith ; suffers with unmurmuring fortitude, reaps 
with joy unspeakable ; and then girdles the earth 
in his travels, his heart all the while pulsating 
with the Spirit’s own mighty Love. 

Whose heart has not thrilled at the story of 
Delia, the sin-marred queen of a Mulberry street 
dive, and of her rescue from a life of shame # 
Yet it was the burning love of Christ in her heart 
which led Mrs. Whittemore to seek to save this lost 
one. It was love that breathed out the earnest 
prayer over the spotless rose and offered it to 
the erring one. It was love that drew the poor 
girl to the Door of Hope in the hour of her con- 
viction. It was love that welcomed her, wept 
over her, and melted her heart with contrition and 
repentance. And then Love begat Love. For 
saved to the uttermost, this rescued one broke 
the alabaster box of her redeemed life as an offer- 
ing of sweetest savor at the feet of Him whose 
Love had saved her, and went forth to tel! the 


12 THE SHORET OF HIS INCOMING. 


story of that Love to others. In prisons, in the 
slums, in street meetings, wherever this ran- 
somed one told the story of Him who loved us 
and gave Himself for us, the kindling love of the 
Holy Ghost so fired her soul that strong, sin- 
hardened men, bowing and sobbing under her 
thrilling, impassioned words, were swept by 
scores into the kingdom of God. For one brief 
year the love-life of God streamed, brimful, 
through the open channel of her surrendered 
being; quickening, thrilling and inspiring all with 
whom she came in touch, and then she went to 
Him who was the fountain of her live of Abound- 
ing Love. 

In an interior city dwells a friend ‘‘ grappled 
to our soul with hooks of steel” in the precious 
bonds of the kinship that is in Christ Jesus. By 
the grace of God he has been wonderfully saved 
from a life of scoffing, derisive, soul-destroying 
infidelity. For days and weeks at a time he will 
be engaged in the busy, loving ministrations of 
a secular profession. Then without warning the 
Holy Ghost will suddenly lay upon him the 
burden of lost souls. Driven by the Spirit to 
the seclusion of his own chamber, the love of 
God for the lost will so fiood his being that for 
hours at a time he will lie upon his face sobbing 
out his broken petitions to God for their salvation. 
Then, going forth into the surrounding country 
with mighty, convicting messages, from a heart 
overflowing with the abundant Love-life of his 
Master, he preaches the gospel of Christ in the 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 13 


needy places. In the few short years since his 
conversion God has given to this devoted servant 
over six hundred souls as the fruitageof the life of 
Abundant Love. Beloved, are we walking in this 
Abounding Love-life? Do we know its power, 
joy and fullness? If not we are falling short of 
the high calling of Him who came that we might 
have lovenot meagrely, but bhaveit ABOUNDINGLY. 
Again it is a life of 
Abundant Peace. 

‘The fruit of the Spirit is peace.”’ (Gal. v. 22). The 
peaceor Gop * * shall keep your hearts and minds.”’ 
(Phil. iv. 7). ‘‘My peace I leave with you.”? (John 
xiv. 27.) 

There rises up here the vision of a lovely 
mid-summer forenoon. As we lay quietly rest- 
ing the inside shutters of the window, under the 
puff of a passing breeze, suddenly opened. 
Straightway there lay before our gaze a beautiful 
picture of sky of cloudless blue: green hills 
stretching away in the dim distance: and noble 
river smiling and tossing in sparkling waves in 
the broad path of the sunlight. A moment the 
vision lingered and then, under the fitful gust of 
a contrary breeze, the shutters suddenly slammed 
shut. At once all the glory and beauty of the 
scene vanished, and stayed hidden until another 
flaw of wind again disclosed its loveliness, only 
to be followed anew by its disappearance. Even 
thus, we thought, is the peace of the natural heart. 
For awhile, when all goes well and plans prosper, 
our hearts are content and at peace. But let a 


14 THE SECRET OF HIS INCOMING. 


gust of adverse fortune, a baffling of some favorite 
purpose befall us, and at once peace vanishes and 
anxious care broods in its place. Peace indeed 
we have, but its manifestation is inconstant and 
fickle, filling us one day with rest, leaving us the 
next in darkness and hopelessness. What a con- 
trast with this is the peace of the Abundant Spirit- 
life! For there is a peace which ‘‘ passeth all 
understanding,” and, —as one has well said—“‘ all 
misunderstanding ;” a peace which keeps us, not 
we it; a peace of which it is said ‘‘ Thou wilt 
keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed 
on thee;” a peace which, because born not of 
an outer calm but an inner Christ, cannot be 
disturbed by sting or storm. It is the peace of 
the fulness of the Spirit. The sea has a surface 
which tosses, and frets, foams and spumes, rises, 
staggers, and falls under every passing wind 
that assails its unstable life. But it has also 
deeps which have lain in motionless peace for 
ages, unswept by wind, unswayed by billow. 
So there are for the timorous hearts moveless 
deeps of peace whose unbroken rest can be 
pictured only by that wonderful phrase—*‘ the 
peace of God.” Tue pEacE or Gop! Think 
of it for a moment. How wondrous must be 
Gov’s peace! With Him there is no frailty, 
no error, no sin. With Him there is no past 
to lament, no future to dread; no blunders 
to deplore, no mistakes to fear ; no plans to be 
thwarted, no purposes to be unmet. No death can 
overcome, no suffering weaken, no ideal be un- 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 15 


fulfilled, no perfection unattained. Past, pres- 
ent or future; vanishing time or endless eternity ; 
life or death, hope or fear, storm or calm—- 
naught of these, and naught else within the 
bounds of the universe can disturb the peace of 
Him who calls himself the Gop or PEACE. And 
it is this peace that is ours to possess. ‘‘ The 
PEACE OF Gop shall keep your hearts and minds.” 
Not a human peace attained by self-struggle or 
self-discipline, but Divine peace—the very peace 
which God himself has, yea, is. This is why 
Jesus Himself says, ‘‘My peace I give unto 
you.” Human, man-made peace, which rises 
and falls with the vicissitudes of life is worth- 
less; but the peace of Curisr,what a gift is this! 
Mark the surroundings when Christ spake these 
words, and how wonderful this peace appears ! 
It was just before His death. Before Him is the 
kiss of the traitor: the hiss of the scourge: the 
weary blood-stained way to death: the hiding 
of His Father’s face: the thorn-crowned, purple- 
robed mockery of His kingship ; and the awful 
torture-climax of the cross. If ever a man’s 
soul ought to be torn with agony, burdened with 
horror, surely this is the hour! But instead of 
gloom,and fear, and shuddering anticipation, hear 
His wondrous words, ‘‘ My PEAcE I leave with 
you!’ Surely a peace like this is worth having! 
Surely a peace which does not take flight before 
such a hideous vision of betrayal, agony, and 
death is an ABUNDANT peace ; is one of which He 
can well say, ‘‘I leave it with you: it will stay : 


16 THH SECRET OF HIS INCOMING. 


it is the God-peace which abides forever. My 
children, behold my hour of crisis, darker than 
shall ever come to any of you, yet my peace 
abides without a tremor. My peace has stood 
the supreme test: therefore it can never fail: I 
pass it on to you.” 

Some years ago a friend narrated to us an expe- 
rience of the Johnstown flood which we have 
never forgotten. His home was below that ill- 
fated city, and when the flood burst he, with 
others, hurried out upon the bridge,rope in hand, 
to rescue if possible any unfortunates who might 
be borne down the river. Presently,as he waited, 
his attention was attracted by the approach of a 
half submerged house which the rushing torrent 
was bearing swiftly toward him, and upon the 
roof of which he saw the recumbent form of a 
woman. With heart thrilling with sympathy 
and earnest desire to compass her rescue, he 
quickly made ready, and as the strange craft 
neared the bridge he cast the rope with eager 
expectancy, but it fell short of the mark. Rush- 
ing to the lower side of the bridge, as the house 
swept under the arching span, he again cast the 
rope with feverish haste and intensity, but again 
it failed of its merciful purpose. ‘And then,” 
said our friend, ‘‘as the last hope of rescue faded 
with the second failure to reach her, and death 
became her inevitable doom, the occupant of the 
roof, who had been reclining on its steep slope 
with her head resting upon her hand, turned, and 
a sweet womanly face looked up into mine. Until 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 17 


my dying day I shall never forget the expression 
upon that upturned countenance! Instead of the 
fear, horror, and agony with which I expected to 
see it distorted, it was quiet and calm, with an 
unspeakable, serene, abiding Peace, and with a 
kindly nod of recognition of my poor effort to 
save her, as she swept on to certain death that 
Peace kindled into a glory that ‘ne’er was seen 
on land or sea,’ whose radiance was unshadowed 
even by the awful roar and strife of the elements 
about.” ‘* Ah, friend,” thought I, as the tears 
leaped unbidden to my eyes under his touching 
story, ‘‘ she must have been a child of the Lord; 
she knew Him; and this that kept her was the 
PEACE OF Gop.” 
Then too it is a life of 
Abundant Power for Service. 

‘* Ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost 
is come upon you,” said Christ to His disciples. 
And their lives straightway became a never-ceas- 
ing record of mighty deeds done in the power of 
the Spirit. ‘‘ Stephen,” we are told, ‘full of 
faith and power, did great wonders and miracles. 
among the people” (Acts vi. 8). Charles G. Fin- 
ney, entering a mill, was so filled with the power 
of the Spirit that the operatives fell upon their 
knees in tears before the mere presence of the evan- 
gelist, ere he had uttered a word. At a camp- 
meeting where the most learned and eloquent ser- 
mons had utterly failed to move men to repent- 
ance, the whole congregation broke down in 
tears of conviction and penitence under the quiet 


18 THE SECRET OF HIS INCOMING. 


words of an unassuming man who spoke mani- 
festly filled with the Spirit. A word, a prayer, 
an earnest appeal, a song that would fall other- 
wise unheeded, goes home to the heart, filled with 
some subtle power when issuing from a spirit- 
filled life. Moody testifies that never until he 
knew the fullness of the Spirit did he know the 
fullnessof God’s power in his preaching, but after 
that his preached words never failed of some 
fruitage. Neither is the power of the abundant 
life confined to the preaching of God’s word. 
God gives to some power in prayer; to others 
power in testimony; to others power in song; to 
others power in suffering and affliction. Every 
soul that knows the Spirit’s abounding life ig 
touching other lives with power whose full scope 
and intensity he will never know until the Lord 
comes to reward. 

Nor is the fullness of the Spirit limited to 
abundant love, peace, and power. It is a life 
too of abundant joy, ‘‘ the joy of the Lord isour 
strength;” of abundant long-suffering, girding 
us with patience under trials that we never could 
otherwise endure; of abundant gentleness, as 
Christ’s own gentleness takes possession of us; 
of abundant goodness, abundant fazth, abundant 
meekness, abundant self-control. That it is not 
meant for apostles, or ministers, or missionaries, 
or teachers only, but for all of God’s children is 
clear, for:—‘‘ fhe promise is unto you, and to 
your children, and to all that are afar off.” 

Wuat Is Its Secret? 


19 


Che Secret of bis Incoming. 


OW then shall our heart-longings for the 
fullness of the Spirit be satisfied? How 
shall we know His abundance of love, 

peace, joy, and power for service ? Whatis the 
secret of this abundant life, this fullness of the 
Spirit? We answer first, negatively, Zé zs not » 
that we have not received the Holy Ghost. Seeing 
the powerlessness, the barrenness, the lack of 
love, joy, peace, and power in many Christian 
lives, and knowing these to be the fruitage of . 
the abundant life of the Spirit, many leap to the 
conclusion that the Spirit has not been received, 
else how account for the feeble manifestations of 
His presence and power ? Wherefore the first 
thing we need clearly to see is that EVERY CHILD 
or GoD HAS RECEIVED THE GIFT OF THE HoLy 
Guost. It is of the greatest importance, in the 
search for the secret of the abundant life, that 
this glorious fact should be clearly seen and 
accepted by the believer. For if he has not re- 
ceived the Holy Ghost, then his attitude should 
be that of waiting, petitioning, and seeking for 
the gift which is not yet his. But if he Aas re- 
ceived the Holy Ghost, then he must take an 


20 THE SHECRET OF HIS INCOMING. 


entirely different attitude, namely, not of waiting 
and praying for the Holy Ghost to be received, 
but of yielding and surrendering to Him who 
has already been received. In the first case we 
are waiting on God to do something ; in the 
other God is waiting on us to do something. 

It will be seen at once that if a manis occupy - 
ing either of these attitudes when he ought to be 
in the other, then confusion and failure are bound 
to result. For example, the simple conditions of 
salvation are repentance from sins and faith in 
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, to keep a truly 
penitent soul in the attitude of seeking or pray- 
ing for forgiveness, instead of simple faith in 
God’s Word that he has been forgiven in Christ, 
is a ruinous mistake, and leads to darkness and 
agony, instead of the light and joy that God means 
him to have. On the other hand, to try to get 
an impenitent soul to ‘‘ only believe,” instead of 
first repenting of his sins, will keep him in equal 
darkness, and make his nominal acceptance of 
Christ a mere profession and hypocrisy. Exactly 
so is it with the case in hand. If the absence of 
the abundant life of the Spirit in us is due, as 
we are persuaded it is, not to the fact that He 
has not come in, but that we have not surrendered 
to Him who zs already in, then it is a tremendous 
and fatal mistake to keep a soul waiting and seek- 
ing, instead of surrendering and yielding. It 
puts him at cross purposes with God. He keeps 
calling on God to give him the Holy Ghost, to 
baptize him with the Spirit. *But God has al- 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 21 


ready done this to all who are in Christ, and is 
calling on him to fulfil certain conditions by 
which he may know the abundance of the Spirit, 
not the Spirit who is to come, but the Spirit who 
is already in him. Have we not known his chil- 
dren to wait, and cry, and agonize for the gift 
of the Holy Ghost through long, weary days, 
months, and even years, from not knowing 
the truth of his Word upon this point? For it 
is ‘*the truth that makes us free,” and if we 
know it not we cannot be free. That all we, 
then, who are God’s children, have ‘‘ received 
the Holy Spirit,” the ‘‘ gift of the Holy Spirit,” 
(as God uses that term) is clearly taught in his. 
Word, for 

1. We have fulfilled the conditions of the gift 
of the Holy Ghost. What are these conditions? 
We would expect them first to be very simple 
and easily comprehended by the most unlearned. 
God does not, and would not, make the greatest 
gift of his love to us, next to that of his Son, 
to hinge upon any but the very simplest and 
plainest conditions. Through all the ages the 
great promise of the Spirit was in the divine 
mind preparing for fulfilment. He would not 
have a single child of His to miss the way. He 
has made it a great highway, and set up finger- 
boards so plain and unambiguous that only pre- 
conceived human opinions, doctrines, theories, 
theologies, and darkening of counsel could make 
us miss it so grievously as we have done. More- 
over when we fave endeavored to lay aside our 


22 THE SHCRET OF HIS INCOMING. 


own opinions and prejudices, and to seek the 
light of his Word alone, we have complicated 
the question by confining ourselves almost en- 
tirely to the experience of the apostles at the day 
of Pentecost. Accepting this as the ‘‘ pattern in 
the mount” for us, we, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, deem the same conditions needful. 
Right here note that in our search for the con- 
ditions of the gift of the Holy Ghost we have 
confined ourselves too closely to the apostolic 
expervence instead of the apostolic teaching, at 
Pentecost. Now a man’s experience of conversion 
may be most marvelous and impressive in its ac- 
companiments. But many a man who has had a 
genuine, glorious experience of conversion utter- 
ly fails when he tries to lead others to Christ. 
Why? Because he imports into his directions 
to the anxious seeker conditions from his own 
expercence which are not essential seriptural con- 
ditions for others. Equally disastrous has been 
this practice in the teaching concerning the glor- 
lous truths of the Spirit, and that too, by men who 
have had genuine, striking experiences of his 
fulness of blessing. They teach us to pray with- 
out ceasing ; to wait not only ten days but ten 
years if need be; to ‘‘ wait for the promise of 
the Comforter,” to look for wonderful experi- 
ences, etc. How many an anxious soul has thus 
been plunged into hopeless confusion and spir- 
itual darkness! The trouble isthesame. They 
are endeavoring to guide us sclely by the apos- 
tolic expertence instead of the apostolic teaching. 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 23 


But the former is much more difficult of analysis 
than the latter, and it may be fairly said to be 
abnormal to us in these important respects, that, 
the apostles lived before Christ came, whzle He 
walked the earth, and after He left it. They 
thus had one experience of the Holy Ghost as 
Oid Testament believers: another when the risen 
Christ breathed upon them and said ‘‘ receive 
ye the Holy Ghost”: another when the ascended 
Christ poured out the Holy Ghost upon them, at 
Pentecost. But this is not true of us. Where- 
fore, to our mind, the important question is not 
so much how the apostles—who lived through 
ihe dispensations, loosely speaking, of Father, 
Son and Holy Ghost—received the Holy Ghost, — 
as how men who lived in the latter, As WE DO, 
received Him. The experience that matches ours 
is not so much that of the apostles, who had also — 
believed on Jesus before the gift of the Holy 
Ghost, as that of the aspostles’ converts who be- 
lieved on Him ewactly as we do, after the work of 
Christ was FINISHED, and after the Holy Ghost 
was given. Let us therefore now ask not so 
much what did the apostles experience as what 
did they teach. Not only how did they receive 
the Holy Ghost, but how did they instruct others 
to receive Him. And here, as always,we find the 
word of God wondrously simple, if we will lay 
aside our own pre-judgements and hear only 
what it says. Tor on that same Pentecostal day 
the apostolic teaching was just as clear as the 
apostolic experience was wonderful. 


24 THE SHCRET OF HIS 1NCOMING. 


If ever there was a time when the presence of 
God filled a human body, burned in a human 
heart, and inspired human lips with errorless 
accuracy of teaching, surely it was when Peter 
preached his great sermon on the day of Pente- 
cost. All aflame he was with the mighty anoint- 
ing of power, and it was the God of truth 
Himself who spoke through him and answered 
the pleading cry of the multitude, ‘‘ What shall 
WE do,” by His own divine word of direction and 
teaching. And what doesHesay? ‘Then Peter 
said unto them, Repent and be baptized every 
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the 
remission of sins, and YE shall RECEIVE THE 
GIFT OF THE Hoty Guost. Actsii. 38. It is evi- 
dent from many passages in the Word that bap- 
tism was here an ordinance administered upon 
faith in Christ asa sin-bearer, and thus God here 
taught through Peter this great truth that :-— The 
two great conditions of receiving the Holy Ghost 
are: REPENTANCE, and Farrn in CHRIST FOR 
THE Remission or Sins. No other conditions 
are required. Repent of your sins, believe in the 
Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, 
(being baptized thereupon) and ye shall receive 
THE GIFT of the Holy Ghost. Two things for us 
to do, and then one thing God does. If ye do 
these two things ye shall receive, says God. The 
promise is absolute. Surely man has no right 
to put any other requirement between the ‘‘ Re- 
pent and believe” and the ‘‘Ye shall receive,” 
since God Himself puts none. If any soul hon- 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 25 


estly repents and believes on the Lord Jesus 
Christ for the remission of his sins, then the 
heavens would fall ere God would fail to fulfill 
His promise ‘‘ Ye shall receive.” 

Wherefore the only question that the child of 
God, in doubt whether he has received the gift 
of the Holy Ghost, need ask is: Have I turned 
away from my sins with an honest heart, and 
am I trusting, not in my own poor works, but 
in Jesus Christ as my sin-bearer and Saviour. 
Then God has given me the Holy Ghost, and 
the peace I find in my heart is born alone of that 
Spirit whom ‘‘if any man have not heis none of 
His.” If we have never honestly repented, or 
have never simply believed in Jesus Christ, then | 
we have not received the Spirit. But if we have 
fulfilled these two simple conditions—a fact easily 
known to ourselves—then God must have given 
us His great gift. Albeit He does not leave us 
to rest alone upon logic even as good as this, but 
buttresses it with the next great proof that we_ 
have so received Him, namely, 

9. By the witness of the Spirit Himself ; by 
our own experience of His incoming, when we 
fulfilled these conditions. ‘‘ Therefore being 
justified by faith we have peace with God through 
our Lord Jesus Christ.” Do we not, many of 
us, remember the very day, and hour, and place 
when, baving repented and believed in Jesus 
Christ, our hearts were filled with wondrous 
peace and joy therein? Or, even if it did to others 
of us come less definitely as to time and place, 


26 VTHH SECRET OF HIS INCOMING. 


yet was the experience of the peace that came 
into our heart, to replace the distress and unrest 
that had dwelt there for years, any the less defi- 
nite or wonderful because it had stolen upon us 
gradually and quietly? The Spirit bore witness 
with our spirit. No power in existence could 
bring the peace that we have concerning past 
sins save the Holy Ghost. Jesus alone is our 
peace concerning the past, and the Holy Ghost 
alone could communicate to our hearts the expe- 
rience of that peace. The fact that it is there 
is proof absolute of the Spirit's presence. Let 
none rob us of this conscious attestation of His 
incoming. We know He is in us because none 
but Him could work in us such fruitage as that 
of which we are conscious. We repented ; we 
believed ; and He came in, to abide with us for- 
ever.” Let our hearts be at rest. Nor does it 
matter much that this is not what we mean by 
‘the gift of the Holy Ghost. _ itis what God 
says. And the sooner we use God’sterms, accept 
God’s statements, and obey God’s commands, the 
sooner will the darkness that shrouds this great 
truth flee away and let in upon our souls the 
clear shining of the day. 

3. Lt is the constant assertion of Gods Word 
concerning believers. Notice how emphatic this 
is. ‘‘Know ye not that ye arr the temple of God 
and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you (I. Cor. 
iii, 16). Not that we shall be hereafter, but that 
now we believers are the temple of God, and 
that -the Spirit divel/s now (present tense) in us. 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 27 


Again (mark the tenses) ‘‘What! Know ye not 
that your body 1s the temple of the Holy Ghost 
which 1s in you, which ye Have of God” (I. 
Cor. vi. 19). Again ‘‘ For ye aRE the temple of 
the living God” (II. Cor. vi. 16). Also (II. Cor. 
xiii. 5 R. V). ‘* Try your own selves whether ye 
bein the faith: prove your own selves. Or know 
ye not as to YOUR OWN SELVES that Jesus Chrost 
as in rou? Unless indeed ye be reprobate.” 
How clear this last passage is upon the points 
named. Note the simple condition again: ‘Try 
your ownselves whether ye be IN THE FAITH.” 
That is, “‘are you believers? Are you simply 
trusting the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation? 
If so know ye not as to YOUR OWN SELVES that 
Jesus Christ 7s 2 you? unless indeed when you 
examine yourself you find that you are ‘‘repro- 
bate,” that is, ‘‘not-standing-the-test,” not trust- 
ing Christ, but something else. How simple all 
this is, and how harmonious, with the truth as 
Peter preached it! He says ‘‘repent and believe 
in Jesus Christ.” And Paul says to these who 
have repented and are now believers ‘‘ Don’t you 
know that the only question you have to ask 
yourselves is: ‘Am I trusting in Christ? If so 
Jesus dwells in you,in the Holy Ghost.” Beloved, 
even though we had never had a single emotional 
experience of the indwelling presence of the 
Holy Ghost yet we would be bold indeed—to say 
nothing worse—to deny the glorious fact of His 
indwelling in the face of the constant, explicit, 
assertions of God that we Are His temple, that 


28 THH SEORET OF HIs INCOMING. 


He Doers dwell in US, and that we HAVE this great 
gift of the Spirit from God now. 

£. Christ and the Apostles always take this 
truth for granted in addressing believers. Note 
Paul’s exciamation of surprise that they should 
for a moment lose sight of this fundamental 
truth. What! “Know ye not?” (I. Cor. vi. 
19.) Are ye ignorant or forgetful of this great 
and glorious truth that the Holy Ghost dwelleth 
in you? (I. Cor. iii. 16.) Do you grow doubt- 
ful of His presence because you are not having 
any such wonderful experience of it as you ex- 
pect? Doyou forget that His indwelling does 
not depend upon your emotions, but upon your 
union with Christ which has been long since ac 
complished by God through your faith in Him? 
(I. Cor. i. 30.) And then again (Acts xix. 2). he 
says to them not ‘‘ Have ye received the Holy 
Ghost since ye believed?” as in the authorized 
version, but ** Did ye receive the Holy Ghost 
when ye believed 2?” showing that he expected all 
the children of God to receive the gift at ¢h 
time of repentance and belief in Christ. 

So too, notice Christ’s attitude toward the same 
truth in His constant use of the word ‘‘ Abide.” 
‘‘Abide in me and I in you.” “If ye abide in 
me.” ‘‘And now, little children, abide in Him” 
(I. John ii. 28). What is the truth here? Clearly 
this: The word “ abide” means to stay, to re- 
mam in a place in which you already are. Thus 
when you request a company of people to abide, 
to stay ina room, we at once understand that 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 29 


those addressed are already there. When Paul 

said ‘‘except these abcde in the ship ye can not be 

saved,” we know that they were already in the 

ship. Now Christ’s word to the sinner is, 

‘* Come,” because he is out of Christ. But His 

word to the believer is, ‘‘Abide, stay,” because 

he is already, and forever, em Christ. Butno man 

can be in Christ and not have received the Holy! 
Ghost. It is impossible. For He is the giver 

of the Spirit. In Him is /7fe, and the instant xe 
are united to Him by faith we must receive the 

Spirit. The wire can no more be joined to the 

dynamo and not receive the electric fluid; the 

branch can no more be joined to the vine and not 

receive the thrill of life, than we can be joined 

to Christ by faith and not receive His great 

resurrection gift. ‘‘Z am the vine, ye are the 

branches.” 


80 


Che Secret of his Tncoming, 


(Continued, ) 


UT some one now says: ‘*I believe that it 
BR is the Holy Ghost who has regenerated 
me, and that I could not be born again 
except by His agency. But I do not believe 
this is what God means by receiving the gift of 
the Holy Ghost. Is there nota second experi- 
ence for the believer in which, after his conver- 
sion, he receives the Holy Ghost for service in 
great power and abundance, such as he has 
never known before? Did not Paul say to the 
Kphesian converts: ‘ Have ye received the Holy 
Ghost since ye believed? (Acts xix. 2.); and 
does not this clearly prove that one can be a 
Christian and yet need to receive the Holy 
Ghost afterward?” 

To this we say both yes, andno. There 7sa 
fullness of the Holy Ghost such as does not come 
to most Christians at conversion, and therefore 
is, in point of time, usually a second experience, 
But this is not the gift of the Holy Ghost, not 
the receiving of the Holy Ghost, not the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost as God’s Word teaches. The 
Holy Ghost is received once and forever at conver- 
sion. He is a person. He comes in then once 
and forever, and to stay. We receive Him then— 


UNION WITH OHRIST. 3) 


though we may not veld to him—for service, as 
well as for regeneration. The greater experience 
of His presence and power that follows conver- 
sion, sooner or later, is not the gift of the Holy 
Ghost, the receiving of the Holy Ghost, or the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost as God uses those 
terms, but a fullness, in response to consecra- 
tion, of that Holy Ghost who has already been 
given at regeneration. At Pentecost the Holy 
Ghost came down to form the church, the mystic 
body of Christ. On that great day Christ bap- 
tized the church with the Holy Ghost. Where-) 
fore, as each one of us by faith becomes a mem-' 
per of that body, we are baptized with the same _ 
Spirit that dwells in that body; we receive the} 

gift of the Holy Ghost. We can not too clearly 
lay hold of this. For our deceitful natural heart 
is all too quick to take refuge in prayer, and 
waiting to receive, and thus dodge the real issue 
which is an absolute surrender to Him who has 
been received. So subtle is the flesh that it is 
glad, by waiting petition, to throw on God a 
burden of giving, if thereby it can evade the real 
issue which God has put upon us of yielding 
wholly to Him who has already been given. It 
is exactly matched by the case of the sinner who 
is far more willing to pray and wait on God for 
a blessing than to make the surrender that will 
bring the blessing. But how about the Ephesian 
converts who were taught that they must receive 
the Holy Ghost a/ter they had believed? Does 
not this prove that many, though Christians, 


32 THE SHCRET OF HIS INCOMING. 


have not received the Holy Ghost, and that this 
is the secret of their lack of power and victory? 
Now, if we will examine this instance in the light 
of God’s own word and with unbiased mind, we 
will see that this much-quoted passage (Acts xix. 
2) not only does not support the view that this 
was a receiving of the gift of the Holy Ghost by 
believers after regeneration, and thus proving 
our need of the same, but that itis one of the 
strongest proofs in God’s Word that the apostles 
expected men to receive the Holy Ghost at con- 
version. In other words, the teaching of Paul 
corresponds exactly with that of Peter upon this 
great theme. We will recall from the preceding 
chapter that the simple conditions, as laid down 
by Peter, for receiving the gift of the Holy 
Spirit were: Repentance, and faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. These 
two alone were necessary. But mark this, that 
both of these were essential. One was not suff- 
cient. Men must repent and believe. For a 
man simply to repent of his sins, without faith in 
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, would not 
bring the gift of the Holy Ghost, for one of the 
essential conditions would be missing. So also 
for a man to attempt to believe in the Lord Jesus 
Christ without repenting of his sins would not, 
and could not, bring the gift of the Holy Ghost, 
for the the same reason;—the absence, in this 
case, of the necessary condition of repentance. 
We need not do anything more than God 
requires, but we dare not do anything ess. 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 33 


Every Christian worker’s experience confirms 
this. How often we meet with seekers after 
salvation who can find no witnessing peace of the 
Holy Ghost because there is some secret sin un- 
surrendered, some specific failure in repentance. 
Or again some truly penitent one fails to find 
peace because he will not simply believe in Jesus 
Christ’s atoning work for the remission of his 
sins. The evidence of multitudes of such cases 
confirms then this great truth of God’s Word,— 
that there are but two conditions essential to re- 
ceiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, namely, re- 
pentance and faith ; and that the only reason any 
one fails to receive Him is that he has not re- 
pented, or does not believe in Jesus Christ for 
the remission of his sins. 

With this truth now in mind consider Acts 
xix. 1-6. Paul comes to Ephesus and, finding 
certain disciples, says to them, not as we have 
seen, ‘* Have ye received the Holy Ghost since 
ye believed” (authorized version), but ‘* Ded 
ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed” 
(revised version); thus showing that Paul ex- 
pected them to receive Him at the time they 
turned from their sins. When they answer in 
the negative Paul begins at once to search for 
the cause, and he does so exactly in line with the 
conditions laid down by Peter, as already quoted. 
‘* Unto what then were ye baptized ?” said Paul; 
and they said: ‘*‘ Unto John’s baptism.” ‘*Oh, 
I see,” says Paul in effect, ‘‘ but don’t you know 
that, John baptized only unto REPENTANCE ? 


34 THE SHORET OF HIS INCOMING. 


Now repentance is not enough to bring the gift 
of the Holy Ghost; you must also BELIEVE IN 
Jmsus Curist.” And when they heard this, 
they believed on Jesus Christ and, baptized into 
Mis name, received the Holy Ghost. They were 
not believers al all as we are believers. They 
were practically believers under the old cove- 
nant, not under the new. They can be classed 
only with John’sconverts, who did not, and could 
not, receive the gift of the Spirit, inasmuch as 
they fulfilled only one condition: that of re- 
pentance. So far from being believers as we 
are, and being cited to prove that believers 
must receive the Holy Ghost as a second experi- 
ence after conversion, these men, we are dis- 
tinctly told, had not believed in Jesus Christ at 
all up to this time. Paul simply supplied the 
missing condition of salvation under the New 
Testament—faith in Christ, which should have 
been taught them when they repented. They 
stood in the place a penitent stands nowadays 
who has honestly repented of his sins, but has 
not been instructed to believe in Jesus Christ 
for the remission of his sins. This failed to 
bring the gift of the Holy Ghost just as it would 
fail now. ‘Then, too, the scriptural context, tell- 
ing us exactly how this happened, seems to us 
forever to settle this mooted passage. If we go 
back to the preceding chapter we find an ex- 
planation that makes the whole episode as clear 
as sunlight. In verse 24 we are told: ‘‘a 
certain Jew named Apollos..........came to 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 35 


KEphesus..........being fervent in the Spirit, 
he spake and taught diligently the things of 
the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John,” 
that is, only the baptism of REPENTANCE, (chap. 
xix. 4). While he was mighty in the Old Tes- 
tament Scriptures, yet he evidently did not know 
God’s full plan of salvation, and thus Aquila and 
Priscilla, when they heard him, ‘* took him unto 
themselves and expounded unto him the way of 
God more perfectly,” (v. 26) doubtless teaching 
faith in Christ for remission of sins. Apollos 
now goes to Corinth, and Paul, coming to Ephe- 
sus, finds Apollos’ mis-instructed disciples, a— 
dozen men whohad not received the Holy Ghost. 
Why? Simply because they had not believed in 
Jesus Christ. True, they were believers in the 
sense that John’s disciples were believers, hay- 
ing ‘repentance toward God,” but had not 
** faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul 
therefore simply supplies the missing condition 
of New Testament conversion, and they receive 
the Holy Ghost, not as a second experience of 
full fledged believers, but as the first experience 
of those who had not believed in Christ at all as 
we believe in Him. Instead of proving that the 
Christian man does not receive the gift of the 
Holy Ghostat conversion, but as a second endue- 
ment, this passage is one of the strongest proofs 
in the Word of God that the apostles expected 
men to receive the Holy Ghost at conversion,and, 
if not received, they simply proceeded to show 
that some one of the two simple conditions of 


36 THE SECRET OF HIS INCOMING. 


new covenant salvation kad been neglected at 
the time of professed discipleship. 

Again, take the case of the Samaritans record- 
ed in Acts viii. 5-25. ‘‘ Here,” it is said, ‘* we 
are distinctly told that they believed Philip as he 
preached Christ, and that they were baptized.” 
(v. 12.) True, there certainly was at least an 
intellectual belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Why then was the Holy Ghost not received? 
Since, as we have seen, God distinctly says that 
He will be received if men but repent and 
believe, the fair inference would be that they 
had not honestly repented. We believe this to 
be a case where the other condition of a true 
heart repentance was lacking, even though they 
professed faith in Christ. This was surely the 
case with one of them. For Simon the sorcerer, 
had professed belief and been baptized at this 
time (v. 13), and yet Peter declared to him ‘‘Thy 
heart is not right with Ged.” 

A careful examination of these, the two chief 
passages cited to prove that the sift of the Holy 
Spirit comes as an after experience in the be- 
Hever’s life, will show, we believe, that they have 
no application to us as believers, but only prove 
that seekers after Christ must both repent and 
believe, in order to receive the gift of the Holy 
Ghost. 

It follows too from this that every child of God 
has also been baptized with the Holy Ghost. The 
receiving of the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the 
baptism with the Holy Ghost we conceive to be 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 87 


absolutely synonymous, as God uses these terms. 
Jobn baptized with water telling his disciples to 
believe on Him that should come after, and that 
then He would baptize them with the Holy 
Ghost. This was to be the distinguishing char- 
acteristic that was to mark baptism by the res- 
urrected Christ. When men turned to God under 
the preaching of John he baptized them with 
water. But when they turn to Him in this gos- 
pel age Jesus Christ baptizes them with the Holy 
Ghost. There is not a single instance that we 
recall where ‘‘ baptism ” with the Holy Ghost is 
made a subsequent experience of the believer. 
The apostles were again and again ‘‘ filled,” with | 
fresh anointing,as it were, of the Spirit, but they 
were never baptized again. Nor are any con- 
verts who have received the Spirit in regenera- 
tion ever said thereafter to be baptized with Him. 
The reason is clear. Baptism was plainly an 
initial rite. It was administered upon entrance 
into the kingdom of God. Both baptisms stand, 
in relation of time, at ihe same place, whether 
John’s with water, or Christ’s with the Holy 
(chost, namely, at the threshold cf the Chris- 
tian life, not at any subsequent milestone. 
Wherefore when the baptism of the Spirit is 
urged now upon delievers we may all agree with 
the thought behind it, namely, that of a fullness 
of the Spirit not yet known or possessed, for 
such a fullness is our birth-right. Yet the ex- 
pression itself is not a happy one in that it is 
never, to our knowledge, so used in the Scrip- 


38 THE SECRET OF HIS INCOMING. 


tures,and therefore misleads men in attaching to 
acertain phrase a different meaning than God 
himself gives to it. Two speakers using a word 
to which each attached a different meaning would 
soon land in hopeless confusion. So has it been 
with this great theme, and it would clear up mar- 
velously if we would not only study God’s truth 
upon it, but adopt His phrases in describing it, 
using “the gift,” ‘the receiving,” ‘the bap- 
tism ” of the Holy Ghost exactly as He himself 
does in His own inspired Word. 

In fact the receiving of the Holy Ghost depends 
upon onesetof conditions, and the fullness of the 
Holy Ghost upon another. Because we have 
not His fullness, we leap to the conclusion that 
we have not rececved Him. The truth is that we 
should accept forever the fact that we have 
received Him, and press on to know the secret 
of His fullness. Beloved, let your heart go out 
no longer in petition to receive the gift of the 
Holy Ghost, but let it be filled with pratsE that 
you have received Him, and that He is dwelling 
in you. Read againand again God’s positive 
statements concerning it. Weigh them carefully. 
Recall your own experience of joy and peace 
when the Holy Spirit entered. Notice the con- 
stant statement in the epistles that the believer is 
the sanctuary, the ‘‘holy place” where the Spirit 
indwells. Then remember that he who stands 
with God stands on sure ground. Let no one 
shake your confidence at this point. »If any 
would, then repeat again and again His word, 


UNION WITH CHRIST. 39 


“Ye are the temple of the Holy Ghost, which zs 
in you,which ye have of God,” until you are for- 
ever settled in this glorious truth. 

Then, if notwithstanding you have received 
Him, you are painfully conscious of powerless- 
ness, joylessness, fruitlessness in your life, know 
that there is a fulness of the Spirit who is in 
you; a life of abounding peace, and power, and 
joy, and love ; a life of liberty; a life of victory 
over self and sin; that this life is for every 
child of God who will learn, and then fulfill, its 
conditions ; that, therefore, itisfor you. Then, 
knowing the secret of His incoming, the glorious 
fact that He is now in you, patiently waiting 
for you to act, press on to know the secret of 
His fulness. 

To recapitulate, we believe God’s Word 
teaches : 

That every believer has received the Holy 
Ghost, the gift of the Holy Ghost, the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost. 

That the simple secret of His thus incoming 
is—Repentance and Faith. 

That there is a fulness of the Holy Ghost, 
greater than that usually thus received at con- 
version. 

That there are certain conditions of this full- 
ness, different from the conditions on which the 
Holy Ghost is received (that is, one may receive 
the Holy Ghost, yet not know His fullness); 
lastly: 

That the secret of His fullness is—what ? 


ah Gl” 


ay pe ark 
hey SOON 
ob Mal nina Rat eh 


we tap VN TY Ce Tank Ure 
+ A, Goa aia oN: en 
nay ON pnb ARS Mas’ * IMAG 


r 


The Secret of Mis 
Fullness. 


Dielding to Christ. 


Dield pourselves unto Good. 
Rom. vi. 13, 


[present pour bodies unto * * Gop. 


Rom) xii 1 


Paul, a Pond slave of west Christ. 


ae Rom. i. i 
Nae ease 


43 


Whe 
Secret of this Fullness. 


Cae then, that we have received 
the gift of the Holy Ghost; that we have 
been baptized with Him; that He has 

come into our lives to abide forever ; what then — 

is the secret of His fudiness, of His abundant life 
of Peace, Power, and Love? We answer: THE 

ABSOLUTE, UNQUALIFIED SURRENDER OF OUR 

LIFE TO Gop, To DO HIS WILL INSTEAD OF OUR 

own. Thus, when we surrender our sins and 

believe, WE RECEIVE the Holy Spirit ; when we 
surrender our LIVES and believe, we are FILLED 
with the Holy Spirit. Tur recervine of the 

Spirit is God’s answer to repentance and faith ; 

THE FULLNESS Of the Spirit is God’s answer to 

SURRENDER and faith. At CONVERSION the 

Spirté enters ; at SURRENDER the Spirit, ALREADY 

ENTERED, takes FULL POSSESSION. The supreine, 

human condition of the fullness of the Spirit es 

a life WHOLLY SURRENDERED TO Gop to do Lis 

will, This is true: 

1. In Reason. To our mind, all the clouds 
that have been hindering the clear outshining of 


44 THE SECRET OF HIS FULLNESS. 


this great truth into our souls will vanish away 
before him who will ponder carefully the great 
scriptural and experimental truth of: THe Two- 
FOLD NATURE OF THE BELIEVER. Note first the 
situation of the sinner. He has but one nature 
—‘ the old man.” He is declared absolutely to 
be dead in trespasses and sins. He bas the self- 
life, but not the God-life within him. He walks 
in the flesh, and in that only. The Spirit may 
and does strive with him but is not éa him, for 
only “the who is Christ’s” hath that Spirit. But 
how comes a wonderful change. He repentsand 
believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. What hap- 
pens? He is born again, born from above, born 
of God, born of the Spirit. And what do these 
phrases signify? Simply that a new life, a divine 
life, the life of God has come into him. God 
Himself, in the person of the Holy Spirit, has 
come to dwell in him: he has received the Holy 
Spirit. He has now what the sinner does not 
have— anew nature. But when the new life, the 
Spirit came in, did the old life, the ‘ old man,” 
goout? Alas, not he! If he had, then, To rE- 
CHIVE the Spirtt would be at once and forever To 
BE FILLED WITH Him, for He would have FULL 
possession. But this is not the case. The old 
life doesnot go out when the new comes in; upon 
this God’s word and our own experience are 
painfully clear. But now, as a believer, he has, 
as it were, a dual nature. In him are both 
*‘ the flesh ” and ‘‘ the Spirit”—the old life and 
the new. These two co-exist. Both dwell in 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 45 


him. But as deadly foes, they struggle for the 
mastership of his life. ‘‘ The flesh lusteth against 
the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. For 
each wants not only to be za him but to have full 
possession. ach desires to fild him. The prob- 
lem is changed. It isno longer how shall he re- 
ceive the Spirit. Thatis settled; he Aas received 
Him. But he finds him a joznt-tenant with the 
flesh. Wherefore the question now is, having 
fwo natures within him, how shall he de filled 
with one of them? How shall he know the full- 
ness and abundant life of the Spirit, and be de- 
livered from the lifeand power of the flesh? The 
answer seems clear. How else could he be filled 
save by YIELDING HIMSELF WHOLLY to that one 
which he would have fill him? He has the power 
of choice; he can yield himself to either. Is it 
not clear that whatever life he yields himself to, 
_ that will fill him? When he once yielded him- 
self a servant to the flesh (Rom. vi. 19) was he 
not ‘filled with all unrighteousness”? (Rom. 1. 
99). Even so now just in proportion as he yields 
himself to the Spirit (Rom. vi. 19) will he not be 
filled with that Spirit? It isas though the sweet, 
fresh air of spring-time should enter a ten-roomed 
house full of foul odors. You open up one 
chamber to it, but leave the rest closed and in 
possession of the old, fetid atmosphere. Truly 
the pure air has entered, but how can it fill the 
house until you yield that house wholly to it, 
throwing open every nook and cranny to its 
fragrant breath? Or it is as though a foun- 


46 THE SHORET OF HIS FULLNESS. 


tain were fed by two strong springs bubbling 
up from the ground, one of water, the other 
of oil. There is no doubt that the fountain has 
received water, for it is constantly inflowing. Yet 
how can it be jil/ed with the water save as it 
yields itself wholly to its life-giving stream, and 
refuses to yield itself to the oil? Even so is it 
with the Holy Spirit. True He has come into 
every believer’s heart, and abides there, and will 
abide forever. Yet every believer thus co-indwelt 
by the flesh and the Spirit may so continue to 
yield to the flesh as to thwart, choke up, and 
clog all manifestation of the fullness of the Spirit 
whois within him. This fact that, even after the 
Spirit has been received, there may be a master- 
ship of Self in our lives through failure to yield 
to the Spirit, is a full and sufficient explanation 
of all lack of fullness of the Spirit. He who 
knows the awful power of that self-life in him- 
self; its enmity with God; its carnality; its 
grieving and quenching of the Spirit ; its deadly 
blighting of all the blessed fruits of the Spirit ; 
its fierce and desperate resistings of his efforts 
to enter into the full life of the Spirit, needs no 
other explanation of the failure of fullness of the 
Spirit than the fullness of Self. The trouble is 
not a Spirit un-entered, but a spirit un-yielded 
to, and thus shorn of opportunity to manifest the 
very fullness He desires. The remedy is clear, 
logical, inescapable: a refusal to yield the life 
longer to the mastership of self, and a surrender 
to the Spirit, that ‘the law of the Spirit of life 


YIELDING TC CHRIST. 4Y 


in Christ Jesus may make us free from the law 
of sin and death.” 

It is true again. 

2, In Revevation. God’s word is clear upon 
it. Paul again and again calls himself the ‘‘bond 
slave” of Christ, yielded to Him wholly to do 
His will, not his own. ‘‘I beseech you there- 
fore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye 
present your bodies a living sacrifice * * unto 
God. (Rom. xii. 1.) Hear Paul thus exhort- 
ing believers. ‘‘ YrrLp yourselves unto Gop.” 
** NEITHER YIELD * * untosin”—‘*To wHomM ye 
YIELD yourselves servants, HIS servants ye are.” 
(v.16.) ‘‘As yeHAVE YIELDED * servants to in- 
iquity, even so YIELD * servants to righteousness 
unto holiness.” {v. 10.) ‘‘ But now being set free 
(Greek) from sin (God’s act in Christ) and become 
servants to God (your act of surrender, needful 
to make you realize that freedom which is in 
Christ), ye have your fruits unto holiness” (v. 
22); % é, ye know the power, blessing, fullness 
and fruitage of the Holy Spirit to whom you 
have now yielded. Notice both the impressive 
repetition and the significant position (Rom.vi.) 
of his exhortation to yield ourselves to God. It 
follows the fifth chapter of Romans. That is, as 
soon as the believer, justified by faith, has re- 
ceived the Holy Ghost (v. 5) he is urged to yield 
himself to God, wholly and absolutely. Why? 
Because Paul knows the two-fold nature of the 
believer : knows that with whatsoever he would 
be jilled, to that he must yield: knows that if he 


48 THE SHCRET OF HIS FULLNESS. 


would be filled with the Spirit he must yield to 
Him, otherwise he will go on living in the 
power and fullness of the flesh. Thus the abso- 
lute yielding of our lives to God és the first 
great step after conversion urged in His Word. 
Upon every convert, having received the Spirit, 
and while his heart is glowing with the love 
of Christ who has saved him, should be pressed 
home, earnestly and tenderly, the claim of that 
Christ upon his redeemed life, and His loving 
call to him to yield it to Him in absolute, 
unreserved surrender. There is no other way 
in reason, in revelation, or in practice. Alas 
for our blindness! Converts are exhorted to study 
the word; to be diligent in prayer; to abound 
in good works; to give of their substance to the 
Lord ; to be faithful in church services ; to join 
her various societies, and to busy themselves in 
her countless round of activities. But, (woe unto 
us!) in omitting the one supreme condition which 
God reveals, we fail to lift the single flood gate 
which alone will let into our lives His coveted 
fullness, That this act of surrender is the pivot 
upon which the gate of His fullness swings open 
is also seen in 

3. Tne Experrnce or Gop’s CHimpRen. 
Is it not true of all of you beloved who walk 
the pathway of the blessed life? The Holy 
Spirit painted in your secret soul pictures of a 
walk with God which persistently refused to 
fade, even amid all your failures and falling 
short of them. There were yearnings after a 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 49 


richness and fullness of life in Christ which never 
ceased to haunt your soul. There were voices 
that called you for years to untrodden heights 
of communion, privilege and service. “You 
made many mistakes ; you were misi!ed by false 
teaching ; you groped earnestly in the darkness 
aiter the truth. But now, with the peace and 
joy of an established life in Christ Jesus filling 
your soul, as you look back over the past do you 
not see that the pivotal point of blessing and 
fullness was the surrender of your life to the 
Lord Jesus Christ? Whether long years in com- 
ing to this crisis, or reaching it at a single bound, 
every consecrated child of God knows that this 
act of surrender to God was the supreme step 
that brought him into the fullness of the closer 
walk with God. Your experience may have 
been complicated, confused, difficult to interpret; 
but that this act of surrender was the culmination 
of it all, and this fullness of the Spirit the out- 
come of such act, God’s response of grace to that 
act, all will testify. The lives of such men as 
Carey, Martyn, Paton, and Livingstone vividly 
show forth this truth. The fullness and power 
that marked their lives from the divine side went 
hand in hand on the human side with an un- 
qualified, unwavering surrender of life in its 
fullest sweep, to do the will of Him that sent 
them. Only such can bring His fullness. 

Again, that surrender is the secret of fullness 
is proven by ;— 

4, Tar Resistance OF THE Fiesa. We may 


50 THE SEORET OF HIS FULLNESS. 


be assured thata step which theself-life supremely 
opposes is the supreme step the Spirit would 
have us take. That point at which the Flesh 
masses its most desperate resistance must be the 
point to which the Spirit is most desirous of bring- 
ing us; must be the key-point of the situation. 
Above all else is the deliberate resolve to sur- 
render the life to God this step, this point. How 
clamorously the hostile Self-life protests against 
it! We will lead meetings; sign pledges; fill 
official positions ; draw checks even to the half 
of our fortune ; yea, do anything else; but how 
vehemently and desperately the Self-life opposes 
our yielding our life to God in full surrender ! 
Does any one question that self-will is the strong- 
hold of the Flesh, and that the act of surrender . 
storms the stronghold and is the act which the 
Spirit most desires and the Flesh most resists ? 
Then let that man or woman try to make such a 
surrender. Let them say to God ‘*‘ Here Lord 
I give up all my plans and purposes, all my 
desires and ‘hopes, and accept Thy will for my 
life. Whatever Thou dost want, take : whatever 
Thou wouldst have come, send: wherever Thou 
wouldst have me go,lead: whatever Thou wouldst 
have mesurrender, reveal. ‘‘Lo Icome todo Thy 
will.” Immediately how the powers of the Flesh 
will assail this decision! What clamorous pro- 
tests! What fierce hostility! What agonizing 
struggles ! What deathly swoonings of the soul 
at the mere thonght ! What bitter tests of pride 
and reputation! What sweeping sacrifices loom 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 51 


up unthought of before! The pulpit: the mis- 
sion field : yielded idols : surrendered professions, 
or occupations, or possessions : how these all start 
up like spectres before the trembling soul ! That 
day on which a child of God decides to yield his 
will to God will searce have passed its meridian 
ere he will stand appalled at the revelation of 
his own unwillingness to do God’s will; will be 
astonished and humiliated beyond measure at 
the desperate and repeated onslaughts of the self - 
life, to drive him from the new stand he has 
taken. Just as the frantic cries and wild flut- | 
terings of the mother bird prove that your dis- 
turbing hand is near her nestlings, so does the 
passionate resistance of Self to the consecration 
of your life prove that through that act the self- 
life is in deadly peril of overthrow under the 
mighty hand of God. Child of God, does not 
this very shrinking, this fierce enmity of the 
flesh, prove that his stronghold is unmasked; 
that his secret is betrayed ; that the very thing 
which he most vehemently resists is that, above 
all others, which God wants you to do? Have. 
you done it? For: 

5. THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR YOUR ACT OF 
SURRENDER. When God states a condition of bless- 
ing,no other condition, however good elsewhere, 
can be substituted. This is why all your crying, 
and waiting, and petitioning—yea, even agoniz- 
ing before God—have accomplished naught but 
to leave you grieved, disappointed, and dazed at 
lack of answer. You have been praying instead 


52 THE SECRET OF HIS FULLNESS. 


of obeying. Prayer is all right w7th obedience, 
but not enstead of it. ‘* Obedience is better than 
sacrifice.” So is it better than prayer 7f 7 zs 
the thing God is asking. We are not petitioning 
God ; 7/e is petitioning us! Hear Him through 
His servant Paul: ** 7 beseech you, brethren, by 
the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a 
living sacrifice.” Have you done this? When 
we petition God to do something for us, we ex- 
pect Him to act. When God petitions us to 
make Him a present of our body as a living sac- 
rifico He expects us to act. But lo, we turn to 
and begin to pray, for, we say, is not prayer a 
good thing? Forsooth, it is, but not well spent 
if used to dodge obedience! How subtle the flesh 
is! How in our blindness we do play at cross- 
purposes with God! ‘‘ Abraham,” says God, 
“because thou hast done this thing, I will bless 
thee.” (Gen. xxii. 16.) And what was this thing 
upon the doing of which the blessing of God 
came to him,as never before? It was the yield- 
ing of his all to God in the surrender of his son. 
Child of God, have you done Tus thing? No 
other thing will avail. Constant prayer, impor- 
tunate entreaty, wearisome waiting, attempts at 
believing, reckoning it done—all these are of no 
avail if you will not do this thing. This un- 
yielded life is the very citadel of Self. God will 
not force it. But when its key, the Will, is vol- 
untarily banded over to Him, then He floods the 
life with His fullness of blessing. Would you 
know His ‘‘] will bless thee?” then ‘do this 


YIELDING TO CHRIST, 53 


thing.” Absolutely, unreservedly, confidingly 
yield yourself, your life, your all into His hands 
for time and eternity. 

It will not do, in lieu of this, to give money, to 
give time, to give service, only. Thousands are 
trying thus to silence conscience and rob God. 
We must needs give ourselves. How grieved 
would that true lover be whose betrothed would 
answer his petition for her heart, herself, by 
proffering her purse, houses, or lands! How 
much more must God be grieved by our poor 
attempts to bribe Him by giving Him every- — 
thing else except the one thing he wants—our- 
selves. ‘*My son, give me thine heart.” There 
is a giving which is znstead of ourselves: and 
there is a gift of ourselves. One is the poor 
bribe of legalism to Love : the other the joyful 
response of love to Love. So in falling short of 
giving ourselves to God we fall short of the one 
supreme gift He desires. For God gave Him- 
self, gave all to us. If our response to the 
Lover of our soul falls short of the true-hearted 
surrender of ourselves we thereby show that we 
do not fully trust Him. But the shadow of such 
distrust haunting the unsurrendered heart is the 
barrier that keeps it from the fullness of God. 
For God cannot give fullness of the Spirit to 
him who does not have such fullness of trust as 
to yield his life to Him. Wherefore, beloved, 
knowing that naught but this can bring to your 
heart His fullness of life see to it that you omit 
it not. Know too, that 


34 THE SECRET OF AIS FULLNESS. 


6. THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS FULLNESS 
OF THE SPIRIT 18, IN A TREMENDOUS SENSE, IN 
YOUR OWN HANDS. ‘The question now rests with 
you. Not that it is not all of God and of grace. 
Verily it is. But in Christ Jesus the grace 
phase of it is complete. That is, God has 
already done all He can do for us in giving Christ. 
He ‘‘hath blessed us with every spiritual bless- 
ing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.” Do we 
want God to pour out the fullness of the Holy 
Spirit? He has done so in Christ. ‘*In Him 
dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily ” 
(Col. ii. 9). Do we want God then to put us ‘‘en 
Christ” where the fullness dwells? He has done 
so:—for “Sof Him are ye in Christ Jesus.” (I. 
Cor. i. 30). There is but one thing left, and 
that is yours. It is to so yield yourself to the 
Christ to whom you are united as to give Him 
opportunity to pour forth His fullness in and 
through you. This you must do. Do not attempt 
to throw the responsibility on God. If you do 
He will throw it back upon you, and rightly too, 
Jor that is where vt belongs. All these years He 
has been doing this. Have you been too blind to 
see it? He stands pledged to give you to know 
His fullness so soon as you surrender your life 
wholly to Him, but He does not stand pledged to 
surrender it for you, or to make you surrender 
it. He will not coerce your will. There He 
stops, and waits—as he has been waiting all these 
years for you. Do not say, either, ‘‘I have 
prayed; I have waited; I have wrestled and 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 55 


agonized ; I have tried to believe it done,” and 
the like. Do you not see that in all this youare 
calling on God to do something instead of obey- 
ing His command to do something yourself? The 
question is, have you YIELDED? Bought with a 
price, and not your own, have you taken your 
hands off your own life and consecrated it wholly, 
unflinchinely, eternally to the Lord Jesus Christ, 
to be His loving bond-slaye forever? It is not 
now a question of His fullness : that zs limitless. 
It is a question of your receptiveness, your sur- 
render. Is He worthy cf trust, of ABSOLUTE - 
trust? Then how child-likely will you trust Him ? 
‘How absolutely will you yield-to Him? With 
what self-abandonment will you throw yourself 
upon Him? How far up toward the height of 
fis perfect surrender will you climb? He will 
meet you where you meet Him. The only limit 
to His fullness is that which you impose in the lim- 
itation of your surrender. The more absolutely, 
sweepingly, irrevocably you yield yourself, time, 
talents, possessions, plans, hopes, aspirations, 
purposes, yea allto Jesus Christ, avouching your- 
self His loving bond-slave to do and suffer His 
will, the more shall you know the blessed fullness 
of His Spirit. You may have all the fullness 
you will make room for. In a profound sense 
it rests with you. What a tremendous thought! 
To go through all the long years of life with the 
privilege, peace, and power of the blessed life 
within your grasp at any hour and yet to have 
missed it ! 


56 THE SECRET OF HIS FULLNESS. 


And are you faint-hearted, timorous, slow 
to trust Him so absolutely? Are you loth to 
surrender your will, and afraid of Zs will? 
Think a moment what that will is for you.; The 
bleeding Son of God hanging between heaven 
and earth for you; translation from death to 


eternal life; sons and daughters of God; full- 
ness of His Spirit; peace, joy, fellowship in Him; 
instant, jubilant glorification at His coming ; 
triumphant sharing in His Kingship ; eternal 
ages of unending bliss in His presence—‘¢his is 
His known will for you. And yet you fear His 
will / The soul’s high treason, this, against its 
lawful, loving Lord! Beloved, at the very core 
of thy spiritual life, nestles a deadly cobra of 
unbelief which thou would’st do well, by this 
one deliberate, trustful act of surrender, to crush 
ere it strike its fangs deeper into thy heart. 
The daring cliff-climber, trusting a frail rope, 
swings out with dauntless heart over the dizzy 
abyss, while beneath him the cruel rocks and 
roaring, treacherous sea, eagerly wait to slay him 
if he falls. But thou, beloved, when thou dost 
this day swing thyself out in blind and simple 
trust in Him, will find no cruel fate awaiting 
thee, but the strong hands that catch thee were 
plerced—for thee; the side to which thou art 
pressed in loving embrace was riven—for thee ; 
the heart that throbs with joy at thine obedience 
once broke—for thee. Yea, the Christ who be- 
seeches thee is the Christ of love, desiring to fill 
thee with His own fullness of love. Therefore 
fear Him not, but, entering into the secret place, 
fight the battle; endure the suffering of the 
cross; cease not until you have honestly laid 
your life at His feet ; and verily, ‘‘ He will give 
thee the desire of thine heart.” 


57 


Crust. 


HERE is but one attitude that the life sur- 
rendered to Him dare take, to know His 
fullness, and that is: to Trusr and Opry. 

Upon the necessity of obedience we need hardly 
dwell here, but may simply say that it is the | 
very essence of surrender, which is naught else 
but an absolute yielding of our wills to obey the 
will of another—even our Lord and Master. As 
the whole catastrophe of the fall is wrapped up 
in the doing of our own will, the whole blessed- 
ness of the new life is involved in ‘‘ Lo I come 
to do Thy will.” In surrender is obedience ; in 
obedience is surrender. That surrender which is 
a supreme act of obedience, marks and means the 
beginning of a habit, a life of obedience to the 
Holy Spirit to whom we have yielded. So clearly 
is obedience inwrought in the very idea of sur- 
render that we shall not dweil long upon it in our 
brief limits, but pass on to some thoughts upon 


~ its mated truth of—Trust. 


1. Trust Him as Indwelling. 

There is, as we have seen, an erroneous teach- 
ing which essays to meet our spiritual powerless- 
ness and barrenness by asserting that we have not 
recelved the gift of the Holy Ghost, have not 


58 THE SECRET OF HIS FULLNESS. 


been baptized with the Holy Ghost, and that 
what we need is to wait for the promise of the 
Comforter, and then, when He comes in, all this 
will disappear. We have endeavored very sim- 
ply to show that this is unscriptural, confusing, 
and misleading; that the believer does not sur- 
render his life in order to have the Spirit enter 
but because He jas entered; that the believer's 
life does not climax in the incoming of the Spirit 
but starts with it; that such indwelling is not 
the cap-stone but the base-stone of the entire 
structure of his inner life and outward service. 
Yet so accustomed have we become to the former 
view of this subject that the first thing we do 
after we yield our lives in surrender to Him isto 
begin to look for Him to enter, to wait for the 
promise, to expect His indwelling. Nowitisas 
against all this that we urge the child of God to 
trust in His indwelling. Do not await it, belzeve 
it; do not expect it, accept it; do not seek for 
it, recognize it; do not build up to it, build upon 
if as a sure foundation. ‘‘What,” you say, 
‘‘accept the indwelling of the Spirit as a fact 
before surrender without any conscious incom- 
ing after it, without any feeling or emotional 
experience of Hisacceptance of my yielded life?” 
Precisely. Accept the fact of the Spirit’s in- 
dwelling exactly as you accepted the fact of the 
remission of your sins when you believed on Jesus 
Christ, by evidence a thousand fold more certain 
and reassuring than your shifting feelings, 
namely, the eternal, immutable word of God. 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 59 


That word is plain. God asks of you only one 
thing, namely, that you examine yourself and 
see whether you are in the faith, that is, a be- 
hever (II. Cor. xiii. 5). If so, then He assures 
you that He dwells in you; He reiterates again 
and again that your body is the temple of the 
Holy Spirit, who zs in you, whom ye have of 
God, who dwells in you forever (I. Cor. iii. 16, 
etc.). He does not ask you to inspect your emo- 
tions for this, but to take His word for it. He 
does not ask you to wait for a feeling but to rest 
upon a fact, accepting His plain word as the evi- — 
dence of that fact. Then, apart from any con- 
sciousness of His indwelling, as you believe in, 
accept, recognize, and act upon that indwelling, 
you soon find it to be a glorious fact. A good 
old colored saint when asked howhe had become 
so conscious of the Spirit’s presence in his heart, 
replied: ‘‘Jess you believe He’sthere and He 7s 
there.” And so beloved ¢rustin His indwelling. 
Do not deny or await it, but believe and accept 
it. Like good old Brother Lawrence, ‘‘practice 
the presence of God” and you shall soon ex- 
perience it. ‘‘Act as though I were in you, and 
you shall know that Jamin you.” Right here 
it will much aid this trust in His indwelling if 
we will but grasp the important truth that is 
here in place, namely :— 

Distinguish between THE INDWELLING of the 
Holy Ghost and V2® MANIFESTATION Of the Holy 
Ghost, in His fullness. By indwelling is meant 
His presence in us; by manifestation the con- 


60 THE SHORHT OF HIS FULLNESS. 


sciousness of that presence. Now the indwelling 
of the Holy Ghost depends upon our union with 
Christ, through faith, aswe haveseen. But the 
manifestation of the Holy Ghost depends upon 
our obedienceto His commandments (John xiv. 21) 
(in this case the call to yield ourselves to Christ). 
Wherefore the Spirit’s indwelling depends upon 
our standing, His manifestation upon our state. The 
first is a question of union, the second a question 
of communion, (in this case through obedience.) 
The first is accomplished by God, and is a per- 
manent fact in the believers life independent of 
his feeling about it or consciousness of it. As- 
suredly! ** Of Gop are ye In Curist Jesus.” (1. 
Cor. i. 30.) It is God who united you, child of 
God, to Jesus Christ, and united you forever. 
At that union the Holy Ghost came into you, 
and came to indwell forever (John xiv. 16). That 
the Holy Ghost indwells in you forever is as 
much a fact as that Jesus took away your sins 
forever. Ifyou are a child of God the Spirit 
dwells in you: if you are an obedient child the 
Spirit manifests Himself in you. Your birth 
does not depend upon yourself ; you were born 
of God ; but your walk does depend upon your- 
self and with it the Spirit’s manzfestation. In- 
dwelling should be associated with sonship ; man- 
ifestation with obedience and communion. Now 
sonship is the gift of God and zrrevocable, and so 
is the indwelling of the Spirit. But obedience 
and communion being largely in our hands are 
variable, wherefore, so is manifestation. Thus 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 61 


one of the deadliest errors we fall into is to make 
manifestation the test of indwelling, instead of 
the test of obedience to, andcommunion with, Him 
who is already indwelling. Never doubt the in- 
dwelling of the Spirit because you do not feel 
His presence, any more than you doubt that 
Jesus died for you because you do not feel that 
death. If we are saved only when we feel saved, 
and the Holy Spirit indwells only when we are 
conscious of His indwelling, then woe unto us, 
for the Spirit ceases to dwell in us, and we are 
lost men and women whenever we stumble or dis- — 
obey in our walk with God! What a disastrous 
and appalling error to fall into! Whereas 
when we see that His indwelling depends upon 
an unchangeable fact—our eternal union with 
Christ by faith—but the consciousness of that in- 
dwelling upon a changeable state—namely, our 
walk with God—then any decline in that con- 
sciousness of His presence will never lead us to 
doubt His indwelling, but only stir us to scan 
our lives if so be that we may be following Him 
so far off in the path of communion and obedi- 
dience asto have lost the shining of His manifested 
presence. We see from this also our need to: 

2. Trust Him as to Manifestation. 

Do not dictate to Him the kind of feeling of 
fullness you desire. Do not insist upon a sudden 
flood-tide of emotion. Do not pitch upon some 
other man’s experience, heard or read of, and 
expect God to duplicate itin you. Trust all this 
to Him. We are prone both at conversion and 


62 THE SECRET OF HIS FULLNESS. 


consecration to come to the Lord with a pre- 
viously formed conception of the exact sort of 
an experience we are to have. And are we not 
almost invariably disappointed? Why? Because 
God knows far better than we just what feeling 
to give us. Does not our very surrender to do 
and receive //¢s will, instead of our own, carry 
with it a loving submission to Him in this matter 
of manifestation, as in all others, accepting 
sweetly just such individual measure of fullness 
as He deems best? Paul had such wonderful 
manifestations of spiritual things as to need a 
thorn in the flesh ‘“‘lest, he should be exalted over- 
much.” Thereis asuggestion herethat the Lord 
knows just what form and degree of fulness to 
give each one of us, to keep us from spiritual 
pride, or exaltation. ‘Therefore leave it all to 
Him. Whether sudden or gradual; quiet or 
jubilant ; great peace or great power ; it matters 
not. Let us be concerned to meet the conditions 
of promise, and God will always take care of the 
fulfilinent of the promise. He who yields him- 
self most fully to the cross of Christ in surren- 
der, leaving the whole question of experience of 
fullness with God, will come sooner and more 
abundantly into its blessedness than he who, 
ignoring the conditions of full discipleship, 
spends his time awaiting tongues of fire and 
sound of rushing, mighty wind. 

Nothing is more hurtful than to be constantly 
inspecting our own inner lives to see if God is 
fulfilling His promises in our experience. It is 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 68 


iike the child constantly digging up the seed to 
see if it has sprouted. The question of the ew- 
perience of fullness of the Spirit belongs to the 
Lord. It is His gracious work alone. He has 
promised ‘*/ will manifest myself”; ‘‘this is A/y 
part; leavethis to Me.” The supreme thing for 
us to do is to fulfill the conditions placed upon 
us, through which God’s blessing comes, and 
trustfuily leave His part to Him. The less we 
are concerned and anxious about the manifesta- 
tion of His fullness the sooner will it come. 
Perfect faith in God, as we have seen, isall essen- — 
tial to knowing His fulness. But is there not 
in this scanning each pulse of feeling as it comes, 
a subtle unbelief, a fear that perhaps Ged will 
not be faithful even though we are? And back 
of it all are we not perhaps more anxious for the 
blessing, the joy, the feeling of the Spirit’s full- 
ness than eager, and willing, and quick to yield 
our lives to our blessed Lord even though no 
feeling should follow it? Wherefore,beloved, be 
occupied with an honest, complete, heart-search- 
ing surrender, and leave all else in God’s hands. 

5. Lrust the Spirit as He works 0x you. 

At no point is a simple, unwavering trust in 
Him needed more than just here. For consider 
first how utterly incapable you yourself are of 
shaping, fashioning, purifying the life you have 
just yielded into His hands. How full of errors 
and failures it has been! How far it falls short 
even of your own human, not to speak of His 
divine, ideal for it! How sinful, weak and incon- 


84 THE SECRET OF HIS FULLNESS. 


sistent! As you have striven, labored and bat- 
tled in your efforts to develop it, how colossal 
has seemed the task, how hopeless the outcome ! 
You are wrestling not against flesh and blood, 
but against principalities and powers; against 
the rulers of darkness ; against those who laugh 
in scorn at your self-efforts to overcome them. 
You know not the power of evil ; you know not 
the might of the self-life ; you know not God's 
power to cope with both. Apart from God you 
know not what armor you need ; what weapons 
to wield; what battles must be fought; what 
crisis the unknown future will bring ; how the 
old man shall be ‘‘ put off ;” how the new shall 
be put on; where your lot shall be cast; nor 
what field God has prepared for you. As you sit 
and pouder how hopeless it is for you, a mortal 
inan or woman, to try to mould and shape a life 
that is immortal in its service, scope and destiny, 
sweeping far into the mystic depths of eternity 
in its outcome, do you not realize how foolish 
you have been even to attempt to possess and 
control that life instead of yielding it at once to 
the Holy Spirit who brought it into being? Can 
you do anything else than trust Him wholly and 
absolutely with it, in view of your utter failure 
and inability to fashion it for the ministries, not 
only of this life, but of eternity ? 

But on the other hand mark how simply and 
absolutely you can trust the Spirit to work in 
the life you have yielded. Did He not bring you 
into being? Does He not know you as only the 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 65 


all-seeing God can? Is He not acquainted with 
your sins and weaknesses; fleshliness and fail- 
ures ; powers and talents ; regretted past, un- 
satisfied present, and unknown, eternal future? 
Does He not know just when you need chasten- 
ing, and when rebuke? When to press hard 
with the cross, and when to comfort with His 
own joy? When to usethe knife and when to 
pour in the soothing ointment? Just how to 
mould and fashion ; chisel and cut; straighten 
and strengthen ; pound, hammer and polish until 
the statue is as He would have it—like the Son? 
Wherefore rrust Him. When He leads you 
into paths that wound your faltering feet; con- 
fronts you with a future that lowers dark and 
threatening ; hems you in with providences that 
seem harsh and mysterious ;—in all these stand 
still ; whisper to yourself, ‘‘It is God that work- 
eth,” and—rrusr Him. For the Spirit must 
needs work in you ere He can work through you. 
He must needs purify the gold ere He can send 
it forth as sterling coin, the choicest of His mint- 
age. And if you will not stay under His hand, 
even when He works ever so strangely, how can 
Heaccomplish His deepening, enlarging, enrich- 
ing purpose in your life? Wherefore rrusr Him 
as He works iy you. It matters not that His 
dealings with you are strange, mysterious, even 
confusing : that this is not the way in which you 
would like Him to work ; that He is not sending 
you experiences of the kind or degree you ex- 
pected. You may not indeed understand all 


66 THH SHCRET OF HIS FULNESS. 


this but He does, ‘‘for itis God that worketh zn 
you.” But you would not dare take your case 
out of His hands even if you could,—would you? 
Therefore trust Him while He inworks. 

4. Linally trust Him to work THROUGH you. 

It is one thing to work for God ; it is another 
to have God work through us. We are often 
eager for the former ; God is always desirous of 
doing the latter. One of the important facts in 
the surrender of the life is that it is the attitude 
which gives God a chance to work His perfect 
will through us. For it is God that is working 
to evangelize the world; it is God who has laid 
the plans for it; it is God who has the power to 
successfully execute them. Now the God who 
is the ruler of the universe does not want us to 
plan, and worry, and work for Him. For while 
He appreciates our purposes toward Him, yet 
they may be all athwart His purposes for, and 
through, us. What He wants is not our plans, 
but our lives, that He may work //is plans 
through us. 

Now God will certainly do this through every 
life that is yielded to Him, if we simply trust 
Him so to do, and follow Him as He leads us on. 
His word upon this is clear. ‘‘For we are.... 
created in Christ Jesus UNroO GOOD WoRKS which 
Gop hath BEFORE ORDAINED that we should WALK 
IN THEM” (Eph. ii. 10). God hath an ordained 
plan of good works in Christ Jesus, and as each 
member of the body of Christ yields himself or 
herself to Him absolutely to do Zs ordained 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 67 


works, He will give to, and reveal to,that individ- 
ual member his or her particular works, so that 
they may walk in them. This is a plain promise 
of guidance, not only into a practical life-work for 
each one yielded to him, but ¢he life-work which 
God has ordained for each one of His children 
‘from before the foundation of the world.” Is 
this incredible to you, beloved? Nay, anything 
else ig incredible! For that God should have a 
purpose for every drop of dew glittering in the 
morning sunlight : for every blade of grass that - 
upsprings from the earth: for every flower that 
blooms on hill or heath: and yet not have a plan 
for the lives of the men and women for whom 
these were created, is indeed in the last degree 
incredible! And do you reply that there are 
myriads of lives of His children apparently afloat 
upon the stream of a purposeless existence? Alas, 
yes. But it is because God can not reveal His 
will to an unrenounced Self-will; can not make 
clear His plans to a life full of Self-plans. Such 
unyielded Self-plans and Self-will become the 
fleshly cataract that veils the spiritual vision to 
God’s plan and God’s will. But when you yield 
your life wholly to Him,God will take away that 
veil and sooner or later show you your life-work. 
This is true, it matters not how dark the way is 
now, how hedged in by adverse circumstances, 
how trying or complicated your present position. 
You may have to wait: you must needs be 
patient: but God will assuredly extricate you 
from all entanglements,and work out His blessed 


68 THE SHCRET OF HIS FULNESS. 


will through you, if you will but trust,wait, and 
obey as He guides. Many a life once so hemmed 
in as to seem beyond hope of freedom, is now 
witnessing for Christ inthe distant dark-lands. 

We have a dear friend who, soon after being 
saved, was led to see the truth and glorious priv- 
ilege of the surrendered life, and gave that life 
simply and trustfully to God. He was a busy 
man, shut in all day behind a counter, in a posi- 
tion that seemed to bar him absolutely from 
being led into any life work God might have 
planned for him. Yet mark theresult. Reading 
one day an interesting item ina religious journal, 
he was led to write the author, and ask permis- 
sion to print and circulate it free, in tract form. 
This was willingly granted, and the little leaflet 
began to go out on its errand of blessing from 
the hand-press of our friend, who was an ama- 
teur printer. As the months went by other leaf- 
lets were added; voluntary offerings began to 
come in for the work; the few hundred tracts 
crept up into thousands, and hundreds of thou- 
sands ; stories of conversion of sinners, and bless- 
ing to God’s children, poured in from the logging 
camps of Michigan, the prisons of Wisconsin, 
the country at large, and the mission fields of dis- 
tant lands. In the two or three years since this 
work began one million tracts have been sent out 
free ; the Word of God has been circulated to an 
extent, and with results, that eternity alone will 
reveal ; and our busy friend is one of the hap- 
piest of the great King’s servants, in the con- 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 69 


sciousness of being in a work which God has 
planned for him, and gave to him when he yield- 
ed his life to Him. Even so will God assuredly 
lead every surrendered child of His out from the 
place of darkness, inquiry, and uncertainty, into 
the light and joy of that God-planned, and God- 
empowered service which is to be his glad life- 
work, if he will only rrusr Him who works zn 
us, and desires to work mightily through us. 


eer 
= ae OR ACR RE, Te, 
a oan edi ci 


dmDantfestation. 


Y Indwelling is meant, as we have seen, the 
presence of the Spirit in us as believers : 
by Manifestation is meant the conscious- 

ness of His presence; the inner revelation of the 
Spirit to our Spirit. Concerning this, notice, 
1. Lts Certainty. Will there be such a mani- 
festation of the fullness of the Spirit when we 
yield our lives to Him? Will we be aware of 
a great inner change in those lives? Will there 
be a conscious transformation, a conscious new 
estate of christian experience? ‘To this we an- 
swer :—Is the sluggish, stagnant river conscious 
of the inrushing waters of the sea, as it feels the 
throb and rush of her cleansing tides? Is the 
dark, gloomy old castle conscious of the fresh, 
sweet air that fills its wind-swept chambers, as 
they are flung wide open to it? Are the sightless 
eyes, that have been veiled for years in hopeless 
darkness,conscious of the bright light of day, when 
it first breaks upon their enraptured vision? So, 
assuredly, is there a conscious manifestation to 
the soul that has given itself, for all time and all 
things, to God. There must be, there will be, a 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 7 


change: arealization of His presence to a degree 
never known before: a consciousness that the 
greatest crisis in the spiritual life has been passed. 
Nor does it matter whether such manifestation 
of His fullness bursts upon us like the sudden 
out-flashing of the sun from behind dark clouds, 
or steals upon us like the slow-increasing olow of 
the morning twilight, gradual but sure. Enough 
for us to know that such manifestation does come: 
that He does reveal Himself in fullness, power, 
and blessing never known before. His beseech- 
ing us to present our bodies to Him was not idle 
entreaty ; our yielding to Him was not vain ex- 
periment. He fulfills His promise, ‘‘I w7/d man- 
ifest myself, as I do not unto the world.” Hence- 
forth there is height and depth, peace and power, 
joy and blessing, communion and service, prayer 
and praise, such as the past has never possessed. 
To that soul who gives himself wholly to God, 
life is transformed beyond his fondest hopes : the 
blessings of the Abundant Life become richer 
and fuller as the days go by: God does exceeding 
abundantly above all he can ask or think. He is 
‘‘ strengthened with might by His spirit in the 
inner man”: *‘ filled with all the fullness of God”: 
made to ‘“‘abound more and more”: and out of 
this abundance overflow ministry, testimony, and 
blessing to those about him. 

2. Lis Individuality :—Manifestation will vary 
with the individual. Two men,absorbed in con- 
versation, stand upon arailroad track, not noting 
the approach of a train swiftly bearing down 


72 THE SECRET OF HIS FULNESS. 


upon them. Just in time both are snatched, by 
friendly hands, from the awful death impending. 
To both, as they turn away with blanched faces, 
the same event has come, namely, rescue from 
terrible death under the wheels of the rushing, 
roaring train. But mark how differently it af- 
fects them. One’s eyes fill with tears ; his voice 
trembles with suppressed emotion ; and his heart 
is quietly uplifted, in profound gratitude to God. 
The other, fairly ecstatic in his emotion, leaps 
for joy, embraces his rescuers, and exultantly 
recounts the story of his deliverance to all whom 
he meets. ‘he same blessing has come to both, 
but the experience manifests itself diversely, 
because their individual temperament is differ- 
ent. Just so is it here. Two of God’s children 
yield their lives to Him in entire surrender. In 
response to that surrender the same event will 
come to them both—a fullness of the Spirit never 
known, never thought possible, before. But 
the manifestation, the experience of that full- 
ness, will not be the same in both ; it will neces- 
sarily vary with the individual temperament. 
For God not only gives the fullness, but He 
also made the vessels which contain that fullness, 
and has made them all slightly different. The 
cup, vase, and goblet of gold, are all full, but 
the water within them takes shape from the 
fashioning form of the vessel. ‘The light which 
streams through the electric wiresis all the same, 
but it takes its tints from the many-colored 
globes through which it glows. Paul and John 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 73 


were both men mightily filled with the Holy 
Ghost; yet how strikingly His manifestation 
was modified by their individual temperaments. 
Paul is exultant, fiery, and vehement. He 
breaks forth, time and again, into shouts of tri- 
umph, praise, and joy. His wondrous life 
burned, and flamed, with love for Christ, with 
an intensity that seemed about to consume it at 
any moment. Life seemed all too short for his 
eager soul to compress into its fleeting moments 
all the devotion, zeal, and enthusiasm, of the 
highest-keyed, widest-ranged life the Holy 
Ghost has pictured in the early church. Paul 
was assuredly full of the Holy Ghost, and thou- 
sands of martyrs and missionary heroes, gifted 
with that same intensity of temperament, and in- 
-spired by the vision of that spirit-filled life, 
have set before them the Pauline type of Chris- 
tian experience as their own desired ideal, and, 
yielded to God, have marvelously attained to, 
and exemplified it, in service and sacrifice for 
the same Master. And yet that man who thinks 
he is not filled with the Holy Spirit unless enjoy- 
ing the same kind, and degree, of manifestation 
as Paul, may be far astray from the truth. 
For, on the other hand, turn to John. No man 
was closer to the heart of Jesus Christ than he. 
He leaned upon His bosom ; he felt the throb of 
His Master’s heart-life as none other ; he inter- 
preted the inmost secrets of His soul. His writ- 
ings breathe out the very spirit of Christ, and 
bring us into the very presence chamber of a holy 


74 THE SECRET OF HIS FULNESS. 


God. Quiet, contemplative, devotional, his soul 
does not seem to break forth into exultant 
shout, like Paul’s, but to be rapt, absorbed, lost 
in the vision of the Christ. Yet John, the be- 
loved disciple, the confidant of Christ, was as 
surely fall of the Holy Ghost as was Paul, the 
great apostle to the Gentiles. In the holy, quiet, 
close walk with God of John’s life, is given for 
us a type of manifestation of the Spirit which 
has reproduced itself in thousands of godly lives, 
whose constant communion, ministry of prayer, 
and quieter forms of service, are unspeakably 
precious in God’s sight, and bear the assured 
mark of His fullness. The Johns, and Ruther- 
fords, and Bengels of God’s fold, are as surely 
filled with the Spirit as the Pauls, the Judsons, 
andthe Patons. Let us therefore, when we have 
yielded our lives, be grateful to God for just 
stich individual manifestation as he may, in His 
grace, vouchsafe us. In envying some other man’s 
type of experience, because it comports more 
with our idea of what the manifestation of the 
Spirit’s fullness should be, let us beware lest we 
disparage, and dishonor, what God has bestowed 
uponus. If He grants us wondrous visions, fills 
us with spiritual ecstasies, catches us up into the 
third heaven ;—it is well. But if He apportions 
to us a quieter experience: pours out upon us 
the spirit of supplication: fills us with a peace 
as profound as other men’s joy is rapturous: 
anoints us with power in prayer, instead of power 
in the pulpit ;—this too is well. For He knows, 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 75 


and **the Spirit divideth asunder severally as 
He will.” 

3. Its accompaniment;—Suffering. In. Peter 
iv. 1, 2, this truth is stated: ‘‘Forasmuch then 
as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm 
yourselves likewise with the same mind : for he 
that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from 
sin ; that he no longer should live the rest of his 
time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the 
will of God.” ‘The flesh—the carnal nature— 
which in Christ was sinless is in us sinful; is the 
sphere in which sin works, ‘‘the body of sin,” 
as it were. Wherefore, in yielding our lives 
wholly to God to do His will, the old self-will, 
the flesh-life, must feel the touch of the cross of 
Christ, for it is only as it is put in the place of 
crucifixion with Christ, through surrender and 
faith, that we can cease to do our own will, and 
come to do the perfect will of God. This means 
suffering, and the Word tells us plainly that we 
are to ‘‘arm ourselves likewise with the same 
mind,” and expect to suffer in the flesh, in order 
to ‘‘no longer live the rest of our time in the 
flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” 
Now in seeking to know the fullness of the Spirit, 
we nieet just such an experience. When yield- 
ing our lives to God, instead of the great mani- 
festation of peace and joy of the Spirit we an- 
ticipated, we are troubled at finding one totally 
different. We come instead into a place of 
struggle, and of soul-agony : a consciousness of 
fierce resistance, and of keenest suffering: of tur- 


76 THE SECRET OF HIS FULNESS. 


mou, uncertainty, and distress. Instead of light 
is darkness: instead of peace, a dire unrest: in- 
stead of fullness, a seemingly utter spiritual void, 
and barrenness in our souls: instead of advance, 
én apparently backward step. All the whilecon- 
tinues this sense of intense,awful,inward suffer- 
ing, which we can neither define, describe, nor 
understand, save that it is so utterly diverse 
from our expectation as to throw us into almost 
hopeless confusion. And yet this experience is 
absolutely normal, explainable, and to be ex- 
pected in every yielded life. ‘We do err not 
knowing the Scriptures.” If wehad known them 
we would “arm ourselves with the same mind,” 
we would expect, in advance, exactly this experi- 
ence. Let any believer who comes into this crisis 
be not confounded, or discouraged thereby, for 
it is sure evidence that God és going to bring him 
into the place of Suliness for which his heapt 
yearns. The journey to the upper room of Pen- 
tecost must needs be by a place called Calvary : 
God has the self-same place for self as for sins 
—the cross of Christ : The man who cried, ‘* It 
is no longer I but Christ that liveth in me,” first 
cried, ‘I have been crucified with Christ.” But 
it hurts to be crucified even with Christ! And 
so there is darkness, and struggle, and agony, 
and suffering. Nevertheless, ‘‘ fear not, only 
believe,” for ‘* if we have been united with Him 
by the likeness of His death we shall be also by 
the likeness of His resurrection,” and out of it 
all will come God’s own rest, peace and power. 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. Th 


4. Its time:—the time of surrender. As has been 
stated, we are not, the instant we have yielded 
to God, to begin to scrutinize our inner experi- 
ence to see if He has fulfilled His promise of 
manifestation. For the moment of professed 
surrender is not always the moment of real sur- 
render to God, since there may be something in 
our lives concerning which there is conscious 
failure to yield, and which will thus hinder the 
Spirit’s manifestation at the moment of apparent 
surrender. Yet, as we look back over our lives, 
we clearly see the general truth that the experi- 
ence of the Spirit’s fullness was God’s response 
to our surrender, and we definitely link the two 
together in the time-records of our spiritual life. 
This clears up the mooted point whether the 
manifestation of the fullness of Christ is, or is 
not, an after-conversion experience, a so-called 
‘** second blessing.” If, as has been seen, the 
experience of the Spirit’s fullness is linked in 
fact, and in time, with the surrender of our life 
to God, then the only question is, when did we 
so surrender it? If, at conversion, we not only 
trusted Christ for salvation, but also yielded our 
lives to Him in entire surrender, then we not 
only received the Spirit, but came also to know 
His fullness. But, if an interval of greater or 
less length occurs between our salvation and our 
consecration to God, then of necessity the full- 
ness of the Spirit must be, as it usuaily is, an 
experience subsequent to conversion. Log- 
ically, such an interval is always necessary ; 


78 THE SECRET OF HIs FPULNESS., 


practically, it may be so short as to make the 
two experiences almost simultaneous ; usually 
there is such an interval, long, weary and need- 
less, in which the soul gropesafter the unknown, 
or resists the known, truth. Logically, sach 
an interval is needful because the appeal to 
consecration presumes salvation, and is grounded 
upon it. ‘* I beseech you brethren, by the mer- 
cres of God.” (Rom. xii. 1.) Itis the love which 
springs up in our heart because Christ has saved 
us, that prompts us to yield our life to Him. 
The yielded life is the response of the redeemed 
to their Redeemer, and it is not until after they 
have experienced the love of *“ Him who first 
loved them,” that their own hearts can be kindled 
with the love that prompts to surrender. There- 
fore conversion must of necessity precede con- 
secration. 

Practically the interval may be so short as to 
be almost unnoted. The same flood of grace 
that bears a soul into the kingdom of God, simul- 
taneously fills his heart with such responsiveness 
of love as can find vent only in the instant sur- 
render of the life. Happy are such! Paul 
seemed hardly saved until, in the attitude of con- 
secration, he was crying out ‘* Lord what wilt 
thou have me to do?’ Charles G. Finney, after 
he had found Christ as his Saviour, testities that 
as he emerged from the depths of the woods, and 
walked toward his law-oflice, he found himself 
repeating aloud: ‘‘I must preach the gospel.” 
Almost unconsciously he had, in the very hour 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 79 


of his conversion, surrendered his life to God, 
and the vision of clients, briefs, and professional 
ambitions had fled away, before the vision of Him 
who died for him. The result was that the same 
night, while alone in his office, there came to him 
such a manifestation of the fullness of God as has 
been given to few men since the days of the 
early church, the mere reading of which fills the 
heart with reverential awe at the vision of what 
God can do with the wholly yieldedlife. Usually, . 
there is a considerable interval between conver- 
sion and entire surrender to God. Yetitisa 
needless, and unhappy one. Itexistsnot because | 
God desires or plans it, but because we are 
ignorant of this great heart-truth, or knowing, 
keep resisting Christ’s call. Finally, after years 
of darkness or disobedience, we yield, and come 
into a haven of rest which we might just as well 
have entered years before, instead of long toss- 
ing on the troubled sea without. 

5. lts Progressweness:—Manifestation of the 
Spirit's fullness may be progressive. Not that 
the will to surrender is a process. Itis a definite 
act, done once and for all, and it is well-pleasing 
to God as such. Yet few believers realize at 
the time the significance and sweep of a complete 
surrender to God. Wherefore the perfecting of 
this surrender is measurably a process, and there 
is a progressiveness of manifestation with it. 
In some lives this is less, in others, more marked. 
Some men and women give up their lives to God 
in an instant, with asweep, absoiuteness, and 


80 THE SHCRET OF HIS FULNESS. 


intensity of consecration that takes the breath of 
cautious, tardier souls, and God’s seal of mani- 
fested fullness is as immediate, and im pressive in 
its response. Others yield slowly,and by degrees, 
to God, and their experience takes alike more 
gradual and progressive cast. We may illus- 
trate, somewhat like this: You own a valuable 
landed estate. Deciding, after due deliberation, 
to sell it, you did so in good faith, and are now 
about to transfer it. Strolling over it some day 
before the transfer, you discover, to your sur- 
prise, a fine, living stream of water of whose 
existence you had not known before, and which 
much enhances the value of your estate. It costs 
you considerable of a struggle to let this go with 
the land, for it was not in your knowledge when 
sold. But you are an honorable man, and finally 
yield, for the estate was sold “‘ with all its appur- 
tenances.” Soon after this you discover out- 
croppings of coal upon the same farm, and wake 
up to the realization of the presence of a valuable 
coal mine. But it is now too late, and after a 
severe struggle you decide that the coal mine 
must go too, inasmuch as the sale was absolute 
and without reserve. As the day for the transfer 
comes, you one day discover traces of gold in 
the river bottom, and are soon astonished with 
the tidings that your vanishing estate is one of 
the richest gold-bearing tracts on the continent. 
And now comes a mighty struggle, a supreme 
test. You try to persuade yourself that gold- 
mines were not included in the sale: that the 


YIELDING TO CHRIST. 81 


price is wretchedly inadequate: that you are 
not in honor bound to complete the transfer. 
But in your heart you know that the sale 
was without reserve: that it included every- 
thing, even to the air above and the earth be- 
neath that farm : and your God-given conscience 
pleads without ceasing until, at last, after a ter- 
rific struggle, you yield, and set your hand and 
seal to the deed which sweeps away so much 
more than you had ever forseen. Even so it is 
in many lives. We yield ourselves absolutely 
and without reserve to God, and this, acceptable 
to Him, brings manifest blessing into our souls. 
But we do not begin to know the full scope and 
significance of such consecration to Christ, and, 
if we did, would perhaps shrink back appalled 
from a full-orbed vision of its meaning at the 
outset. Our blessed Lord knows this, and how 
compassionately and tenderly He meets it! Well 
pleased with our yielded wills He soon reveals 
some cherished idol, and shows it to be involved 
in our surrender in blank, as it were, to Him. 
Perhaps we struggle and resist, but our act of 
surrender was honest and sincere, so we yield it. 
Step by step He now leads on, showing us, as 
rapidly as we are ‘‘able to bear it,” how this 
act of surrender includes everything we hold 
dear. Finally,with added faith in His love from 
these experiences, He brings us face to face with 
our gold-mine, our Isaac, some treasure of self- 
will, affection, or pride, than which we would 
rather yield up all else in life, yea, our very life 


82 THE SECRET OF HIS FULNESS. 


itself. But the deed has been drawn: there is 
no reserve ; all must go. And so, out of the 
struggle, comes that perfecting of surrender 
which brings into our Hearts His coveted fullness 
of manifestation. It should rejoice us much 
that there are intrepid souls whose challenge of, 
** Lord what wilt Thou have me to do,” He an- 
swers by a revelation of the sweep and scope 
of surrender, whose instant, fearless acceptance 
brings instant manifestation of His fullness. 
Yet how beautiful that He should thus, lovingly 
and patiently, lead the more timorousand shrink- 
ing souls up the golden staircase of the yielded 
life until, step by step, they too have attained to 
that glad height, which others conquer at a 
bound. 


ee ee 
Gn" 


If. 


The Secret of this Cone= 
stant Manifestation. 


Abiding in Christ. 


Ebdide in me and iin pou. Hs the 
branch cannot bear fruit of itself 
ercepft it abide . . . nomorecan 
pe ercept pe abide John xv 4. 

ibe that abidetb . . . bringeth 
forth mucb fruit. John xv. 5 


85 


Rbioing. 


E cone now to the last phase of the 
three-fold secret of the Holy Spirit. 

Its importance will be recognized in the 
following type of experience, not uncommon 
among believers. <A child of God, brought by 
the Spirit under conviction as to this truth, sees 
God’s claim upon his life, and lays it at His 
feet, a living sacrifice. In answer to that sur- 
render, there comes to him from God a fullness 
of power, blessing, and spiritual life, beyond his 
fondest imaginings, and his spirit rejoices in the 
riches of his fuller experionce. So msnifest is 
the Spirit’s presence in his heart ; so consciously 
is he filled with His life,that he feels as though he 
-had reached a new state of spiritual power and ex- 
perience which would never leave nor diminish. 
But,by and by, there comes achange. The bright- 
ness of the experience seems to dim ; its power 
begins to wane; its manifestation todiminish. He 
still continues to ‘‘ claim” what he feeis is gone ; 
to profess what he does not possess, in the hope 
that this may bring back the ‘‘ blessing.” But 
at last he breaks down in despair, and hence- 


86 SHORET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


forth refers to all this as a ‘‘ lost experience,” a 
blessing which he once enjoyed, but which has 
now fled away. In sucha case—only too com- 
mon—what has happened? It is not that the 
Spirit has ceased to reside in such a believer ; but 
He has ceased to reveal Himself in his former 
fullness. It is not a question of lost indwelling, 
but lost manzfestation. The Blesser has not left, 
but the blessing has. The manifestution of the 
Spirit’s fullness was perfectly satisfactory to him 
in kind, and degree, but not in permanence. It 
failed in continwousness, slowly fading away like 
the flush of the twilight in a sunset sky. And 
why? What is the explanation of this default 
in continuance of manifestation? 

In John xiv. 21 Christ states the general con- 
ditions of the manifestation of the Spirit, when 
He says: ‘‘ He that hath my commandments and 
keepeth them * * * J will manifest myself 
to him.” Plainly referring here to the manifes- 
tation of Himself through the Spirit, He declares, 
asa great, universal truth, that the conditions of 
that manifestation are the keeping of his com- 
mandments, meaning by these, as we shall here- 
after see, not the commandments of the Law, 
bat those of Grace,—Faith and Love—which 
fulfill the Law. In other words, Christ simply 
asserts that the manifestation of God comes to 
him who does the will of God. Th us, when the 
individual in the case cited was a sinner, the 
will of God for him as an unsaved man was 
to repent, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 87 


unto the salvation of his soul. This he did, and 
at once there came the manifestation of God at 
conversion ; the Spirit, as we have seen, was re- 
ceived, and entered to dwell forever. And now, 
as time passes on, he sees that there is within him 
a self-life which is enmity with the God-life, a 
self-will which opposes the divine will, and that 
God’s will for him is the giving up of all self- 
will, and the yielding himself wholly to God 
to do His will. This too he does, and straight- 
way there comes, at consecration, a mighty mani- 
festation of God, in the fullness of that Spirit 
who was already received. To both these acts 
of doing God’s will, God responded by manifest- 
ing Himself to the believer, just as He had prom- 
ised. But now, insteading of halting here, and 
claiming ‘‘ the blessing,” and trying to live the 
rest of his life on his past experience, the believer 
should have pressed on to this kindred truth, that 
since the manifestation of the Spurit comes to 
him who does God’s will, the continual manifes- 
tation of the Spirit can come only to him who 
continually does God’s will. That is, though 
these témes of manifestation have come from 
these acts of doing Ged’s will, constancy of mani- 
festation can come only from a continual doing, 
a daily living in the will of God. Thus, the swr- 
render of the life is only the beginning of a life 
of surrender. The act of consecration must be 
incarnated into a life of consecration, if begun 
blessing is to be continued blessing. For conse- 
eration is rather the threshold, than the climax, of 


88 SHORET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTA TION, 


the Spirit’s fullness. Itisnot somucha star, which, 
once fixed, will forever illumine our lives with its 
radiance, without any further care from us, as 
it is a gateway, which needs to be constantly kept 
open, if the light which came in at its unbarring is 
to continue. And it is just here that the believer 
who is mourning over a “ Jost experience,” has 
failed. He has learned the first and second secret 
of the Holy Spirit, but not the third and final one. 
He has RECEIVED the Holy Spirit, through unron 
witH Christ; has been FILED with the Holy 
Spirit, through suRRENDER To Christ : but does 
not yet know the coNSTANT MANIFESTATION of 
that Spirit, through asrprne in Christ. He has 
placed the climax of his Christian experience at 
Consecration, instead of at Abiding. He has re- 
ceived ‘‘the fullness”: claimed the * second 
blessing”: been made “perfect”: and then has 
done what no mortal man or woman dare do— 
has halted, and rested upon a so-call attained 
experience. Desiring solely to retain ‘‘the 
blessing” that bas come to him, he stops short 
of the final and supreme secret of its retention— 
the secret of Apmprnc In Curist. He is misled, 
confused, and disappointed, because he has failed 
to see that a man may have received the Spirit, 
been filled with the Spirit, and yet need to learn 
how to walk in the Spirit. 

2. Lheneed of Abiding arises from the two-fold 
nature of the believer :—a truth already consid- 
ered in another connection. If, when the new 
life of the Spirit filled the believer at surrender, 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 89 


the old life of the fiesh vanished away, then there 
would be no need for the believer to learn the 
secret of Abiding. But this is not the case. 
True, ‘four old man has been crucified.” But 
he is crucified iv Curist, and it is only as we 
ABIDE in Christ that we realize this crucifixion 
and this resurrection life. The flesh still abides 
in the believer. Otherwise, why is he constantly 
exhorted to walk in the Spirit ? and not to walk 
in the flesh? He should not walk in it, and need 
not walk in it, but the fact that he may walk in 
it, and often does walk in it, proves that it is 
there. And being there, it must be evident that 
every time he yields to the flesh, and walks in the 
flesh, he that far frustrates, and checks the man- 
ifestation of the Spirit. Of very necessity this 
is true, for God cannot manifest Himself through 
the flesh. The mind of that fiesh is ‘‘ death: ” is 
‘‘enmity with God:” is the bitterest foe of the 
Spirit. Therefore, just so far as the believer 
walks in the flesh, yea in every act which he does 
in the flesh, the manifestation of the Spirit must 
so far cease. For the Spirit to do anything else 
would be for God to set His divine approval 
upon acts done by that which He hates, and has 
condemned to death—the flesh. It would be not 
only to let the flesh ‘* glory in His presence,” 
but it would be giving the very glory of His own 
holy presence to the flesh. It would be like 
bringing the Shechinah glory into the polluted 
temple of a heathen deity : like glorifying Dagon 
with the halo of divinity, instead of smiting him 


90 SHCRET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


with the blow of divine judgment. Even though 
a man has been filled with the Spirit at surrender, 
yet God cannot set His seal to a life of non- 
conformity to His will, by continuing through it 
a manifestation of the Spirit due to a past act of 
obedience. ‘The believer needs clearly to see this. 
He needs to understand that since manifestation 
comes to him who does the will of God, therefore 
every time he does the will of the flesh instead, 
that manifestation must be clouded. There is 
conscious condemnation in the believer’s heart 
whenever he yields to the flesh; a conscious 
sense of darkening within, as though a cloud had 
passed between him and God, and shut out the 
light from the innermost chamber of his soul. 
The flesh is just such a veil between the believer 
and the conscious presence of God, and every 
time he walks in it he hangs up that veil. It is 
this very knowledge that these relapses into the 
flesh bring the hiding of God’s countenance, 
which begets in the believer that watchfulness to 
die daily, to put off the old man, to press closer 
and closer to the side of Christ, that is so empha- 
sized by Paul as the final condition of the blessed 
life. Not that such an act done in the flesh, such 
a relapse into the flesh-walk, costs him his soul. 
The question at issue here is not that of salvation 
by Christ, but of communion with Christ. The 
son who has yielded to an act of disobedience 
does not lose his sonship. But there is strain, 
and grief, and broken communion, in the home- 
circle. Sonship is as sure as the blood of Christ, 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 91 


and the omnipotent hand-grasp of the Father can, 
make it. But communion with God is like the 
face of a delicate mirror: even the breath of the 
flesh-life on it will condense cloud enough to 
shadow the outshining presence. How foolish 
then for a child of God to rely upon any past 
‘‘experience,” or manifestation of the Spirit, 
when he sees that the first step he may take in. 
the flesh will cloud that manifestation! And 
how needful that he should press on to learn 
that final secret of abiding in Christ, which alone 
can teach him how these ‘‘ breaks” in commu- 
nion shall become fewer and fewer, until at last 
he has learned to wa/k in the Spirit, and reaches 
the glad consummation, where ‘‘ the /aw of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free 
from the daw of sin and death.” 

Nothing within the pages of God’s Word gives 
more helpful teaching concerning the truths of 
the Holy Spirit than the parable of the Vine and 
the Branches. It is not only marvelously clear, 
and simple, but comprises the whole of the three- 
fold secret of the the Spirit. Picture a branch, 
grafted into the vine, in the spring-time. As 
soon as the union iscomplete, the branch recezves 
the life of the vine, which begins to pulsate 
throughit. This illustrates the believer's receiv- 
ing the Holy Ghost, through union with Christ 
by faith, at the time of hisconversion. Suppose 
now some obstruction in the channels of the 
branch, which checked the flow of sap, so that 
although the branch had received, yet it was not 


92 SHCRET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


filled. The moment this is removed the branch 
is filled with the life of the vine. This pictures 
the believer who has in truth received the Holy 
Ghost, but, by an unyielded will and life, is 
surely hindering the fullness of that life which 
he has as surely received. As soon as he gives 
himself wholly to God, he is jid/ed with the Spirit 
already received. Now here he too often halts. 
He tries to live upon a past experience. But 
the branch does not, yea, dare not. For it is 
not enough that the branch received the sap of 
the vine at grafting ; or that it was filled with it 
the day it wholly yieldeditself toit. But, every 
day and hour of its existence, it must continue to 
draw, moment by moment, upon the life of its 
nourishing vine. It must not only draw on that 
vine for birth, and bud, but for leaf, fibre, 
wood, bloom, and final fruitage. It must ABIDE 
in the vine. It dare not rely to-day on yester- 
day’s fullness. It dare not draw on the vine one 
day, and fail to draw on it the next. If it did, 
then, when the vintage came, there would be no 
fruit. It must aBrpe in the vine. The applica- 
tion to the believer is evident. He must learn 
this final secret. For ‘‘ As the branch cannot 
bear fruit of itself except zt abide in the vine ; no 
more can YE except ye ABIDE in Me.” 

3. Thenatureof Abiding. And now what is it to 
Abide in Christ ? Exactly what does Christ mean, 
when He uses these words to describe the final 
secret of the Holy Ghost? How shall we abide in 
Him that we may know the joy of His promise,— 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 93 


‘Sand Tin you ?” If the climax of the Christian 
life is reached here—as it assuredly is—how im- 
portant it is for us to have not vague, and indefi- 
nite notions, but clear, and well defined knowledge 
of just what is meant by this term. Men, it is 
true, have written beautiful essays on Abiding : 
religious poetry is full of descriptions of it: rich 
and beautiful thoughts have been uttered con- 
cerning it. Yet somehow they have all been 
vague, shadowy, and mystic, in the face of our 
earnest desire to know just what Abiding is, that 
we may practically incarnate its supremely im- 
portant truth into our own every day lives. The 
difficulty here, as always, is that we seek men’s 
thoughts, instead of God’s thoughts, about the 
truth. We ignore the greatest rule of Bible- 
study, namely:—when we come upon a phrase of 
unknown meaning let us ask God, who wrote the 
Book, what He means by it, instead of seeking 
man’s opinion about it. That is, concerning 
some obscurity in one part of the Word, seek to 
find some other portion of that Word which 
clears it up. How much we have slighted God’s 

word, in this respect, is well illustrated by the 
very term we are considering. For all the while 
men have been groping, and spiritualizing, and 
theorizing concerning eae beautiful truth of 
Abiding, there has been staring in our very faces 
God’s own definition of it, as clear, simple, and 
practical as He alone could make it. We find 
itin I. John iii. 24. ‘‘And he that keepeth Ars 
commandments ABIDETH in Him and Hein Him” 


94 SHCRET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


(R. V.). How strange that we have so long 
missed it! It is the same simple truth as that of 
Manifestation. (John xiv. 23.) And why? Be- 
cause it is a question, not of salvation but of com- 
munion. It affects not our safety but our walk 
in Christ. Failure to deddeve in Christ costs us 
our souls; but failure to ab/dein Him, after belief, 
costs us our conscious communion with Him, 
veils the manifestation of His presence. Abiding 
expresses in a single word the conditions of 
Manifestation, treated in a previous chapter. 
For, to ‘“‘him that keepeth my commandments 
I will manifest myself” (Jonn xiv. 23): but ‘‘ he 
that keepeth my commandments adideth in 
me” (I. John iii. 24): therefore it is to him that 
abideth that I manifest myself.” The logic of 
this is clear., ABIDING 7s thus the constant keep- 
ong of His commandments, in response to which 
He manifests Himself in constant communion 
with His children. 

But some one says, ‘‘If my abiding in Christ 
depends upon my keeping the multitude of com- 
mandments in His Word, then I can never reach 
it, for | cannot even remember them all, much 
less keep them, and so must despair of ever 
learning this final secret of the Holy Spirit.” 
Not so, beloved. Turn again to His Word in I. 
Jno. iii, 23: “And this is His commandment, 
that we should BELIEVE on the name of His Son 
Jesus Christ, and Love one another, as He gave 
us commandment.” Tous, who are under grace, 
all the commandments are fulfilled in this great 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 95 


two-fold commandment of FarrH and Love; 
‘* faith working through love.” Soimportant a 
truth have we now reached, that it merits all the 
prayerful consideration we are capable of giving 
it, in the two remaining chapters of this series, 
and to it alone we shall, in conclusion, yield their 
full limits. 


96 


Abiding. 


E have seen that Christ manifests Him- 

y \/ self, through the Holy Spirit, to him 
who does His will, that is, to him that 

keepeth His commandments. We have seen also 
that the constant keeping of His commandments 
is what He calls abiding in Him, and that it brings 
not His incoming, or indwelling—both of which 
are already effected in the believer—but that 
constant revelation of Himself through the Spirit, 
for which every believing heart longs. We have 
seen, too, that all these commandments, whose 
keeping constitutes the Abiding Life, are em- 
bodied in the great two-fold commandment of 
Faith and Love. We take up at this point, then, 
the Faith side of the Abiding Life; the first 
half of the great commandment of I. John iii. 23, 
the continual keeping of which is to give us the 
final desire of our heart: is to constitute that 
abiding in Him which brings His abiding in us. 
What then is this Faith which comprises so 
integral and important a part of the Abiding 
Life? Does it differ from the faith through 
which we are justified, through which we receive 
forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 27 


Ghost? If so, how? We answer that it’s essence 
is the essence of all faith, a LOOKING TO JESUS. 
But it’s, not so much difference from, but en- 
largement upon, our first knowledge of faith is, 
that it is a CONSTANT LOOKING TO Jesus for the 
continuous manifestation of the Spirit: even as, 
at the beginning, it was an act of looking to 
Jesus for the incoming of that Spirit. To make . 
plain this thought, let us notice two points : 
first. The believer in himself is spiritually 
DEAD. ‘In ME, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no 
good thing.” ‘*For yg are DEAD, and YOUR 
LIFE is hid with Christ in God.” (Col. 3, 3.) 
The believer has thus no spiritual life in him- 
self, apart from Christ Jesus. He has physical 
life, soul-life, but no divine life, apart from 
Christ. The simple fact of the new birth is a 
crushing proof of this. So hopeless in himself 
is his spiritual deadness that there must be a 
new birth. His old life cannot be reformed, or 
improved, or in any way utilized by God. There 
is no process, even of divine alchemy, by which 
the base metal of’ ‘‘ the flesh” can be transmuted 
into the fine gold of ‘‘ the Spirit.” He must be 
born again, born of God, born anew, born from 
above, born of the Spirit. The life which comes 
into him then is a new life; it is not his own, but 
the life of God in him. He is not a flesh-im- 
proved man, but a God-indwelt man. It is not 
that he has a better old life than the sinner 
possesses, but another new life, which the sinner 
does not possess at all. He is not called upon 


98 SHCRET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


to try to amend, but to put off the ‘old man.” 
God has the same sentence for the old life in 
him as in the sinner, namely, condemnation. 

Second. Jesus Christ ts spiritual life. ‘“‘I 
am the way, the truth, and THE LirE.” ‘* When 
Christ, who 7s YOUR LIFE, shall appear.” ‘‘God 
hath given us eternal life, and this life is in His 
Son. ‘*He that hath the Son hath life: and 
he that hath noé the Son of God hath not life.” 
** In Him was life;” ‘I am that bread of life ;” 
‘*f give unto them eternal life.” Thus, though 
the believer is spiritually dead in himself, 
yet Christ is spiritual life.” And the believer 
receives life, not as a gift apart from Christ, . 
but by the gift of Christ. Jesus Christ does not 
so much zmpart life as He inbrings life. That 
is, spiritual life comes to the believing one by 
the incoming of Christ, who 1s life. Thus the 
spiritual life in the believer is not his own; it is 
Christ dwelling in him. The believer never re- 
ceives a gift of spiritual life which is now his 
own possession, independent of, and separate 
from Christ: he receives Christ Himself to in- 
dwell in the power of the Spirit. 

Therefore the believer is portrayed as a man 
in himself spiritually dead, indwelt through the 
Spirit by Jesus Christ, who is his spiritual life. 
That old nature is just as dead a thing in the be- 
liever after conversion as it was before. It must 
be regarded as utterly worthless. Its carnal mind 
is ‘‘death,” is ‘‘enmity with God,” and in no 
way subject to'God, or susceptible of spiritual 


ABIDING IN OHRIST. 29 


improvement in the believer, any more than in 
the sinner. Hence the believer’s only hope is to 
give up his own self-life, as utterly hopeless, and 
begin to look solely to the Christ-life within 
him. He whose nature is sinful can look only 
to Him who is sinless ; he who is weakness must 
look to Him who is strength ; he who is empty 
must look to Him who is all fullness ; he who is 
dead must look to Him who is life. So his new 
life must not be an improved ‘‘ J,” but it is *‘ no 
longer J, but CuRIst THAT LIVETH IN ME, and 
that life which I now live in the flesh I live za 
faith.” (Gal.ii.20,R.V.) Paul finds out that he 
is not only justified by faith, but that ‘* the just 
mustLIvE by faith :” not only that he has received 
the Spirit, but that he must walk intheSpirit. He 
has reached the broadest conception of faith the 
believer can grasp, in reaching the faith through 
which we are not only born of God, but the faith 
through which we dive in God—the faith of 
Abiding. What then is this Faith? J¢ 2s that 
habitual attitude by which one who, in himself is 
spiritually dead, is constantly looking to, and 
daily and hourly drawing upon, the life of an 
other—the fullness of life of Jesus Christ with- 
in him. This is the life of faith; this is the 
walk in the Spirit; this is abiding, on the Faith 
side of it. With Faith in this broad sweep 
of the term the word of God has much to 
say, and seems never weary of emphasizing its 
supreme importance. ‘‘ After the same manner 
in which ye have received Christ Jesus, so wulk 


100 SHORET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


ye in Him,” is one of the truths which Paul 
seeks most earnestly to press upon his hearers. 
And how did we thus receive Him? Was it not 
by ceasing from all self-righteous works of our 
own? Was it not by coming, in despair, to the 
end of self-effort, and self justification, and 
throwing ourselves, in most helpless trust, upon 
Jesus Christ, and upon Him alone? Could we, 
by any possible effort of our own, accomplish 
forgiveness of sins, and reconciliation with God? 
Could we blot out asingle stain of the multitude 
that crimsoned our sinful lives? Nay: for 
““wethout shedding of blood there is no remis- 
sion of sins,” wherefore we had, perforce, to cast 
ourselves, in utter, helpless faith, upon Jesus 
Christ to accomplish that which we could not 
possibly compass of ourselves. It was thus that 
we received Christ Jesus. Now after the same 
manner we are to walkin Him. Buta walk is 
simply a retterated step. Wherefore, just as we 
took the first step of helpless faith in Christ 
alone for the receiving of the Spirit, so must 
we take each step in our rwalk, our life with Him, 
for the constant manifestation of that Spirit. 
Do we desire power? We must look to Him for 
it each time it is needed. Do we long for Love? 
We must look to Him for His, for ours is cold 
and selfish. Do we desire anointing for service? 
We must look to Him, renewedly, at each recur- 
rence of such service. Do we need guidance, 
wisdom, tact, gentleness, long-suffering, peace, 
joy? Wemust look to him for itll. Note this 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 101 


same truth beneath the surface of Rom. vi. 4, 
‘**That like as Christ was raised from the dead 
by the glory of the Father, even so we also should 
walk in newness of life.” The statement is 
here made that our Christian walk in the new 
life should be like as Christ was raised from the 
dead. Can we conceive of a more perfect pic- 
ture of helplessness than a dead man? Christ 
was, as tothe body,dead. That dead body could 
not of itself rise, move, breathe, or stir; it was 
in itself utterly powerless. Hour after hour 
passed and it lay in the tomb, in the grasp of 
death, with no power in itself to rise, but await- 
ing the touch of God the Father. Then came 
the mighty quickening of the resurrection, by 
which ** God raised Him from the dead.” Christ 
did not raise Himself: it was not so appointed : 
He was raised by another—the Father. Now in 
this same manner is the believer to walk in the 
new life. He is to realize himself as dead, and 
helpless, and is to be daily and hourly looking 
to, and depending upon another, even Jesus 
Christ, even the Holy Spirit within, for every 
step of his walk ‘in newness of life,” even 
as he did for the first step into the same. 
Beloved, do we realize that our walk in the 
Spirit is to be a constant, momentary lzfe of 
faith, as surely as our salvation was by an act 
of faith? That we must not only be regenerated 
by faith, but live by faith? Do we believe that 
Christ meant exactly this when He said, *‘Apart 
from Me ye can do nothing ?” Dare we lead that 


102 SHCRET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


meeting : write that paper or letter: make that 
address : hand out that tract : speak to that soul 
about Christ: make that decision: take that 
next step:—dare we do anything without that 
swift uplift of faith to Him in whom alone 
dwelleth spiritual life? Have we incarnated 
this fact of our own insufficiency into our 
every day Christian walk? Do we realize 
that this is not simply a theme for religious 
essays, ora rather mystic subject for prayer- 
meeting talks, but is meant to be the most in- 
tensely practical truth Christ can give to us, and 
to be inwrought into every act, every word, 
every thought? Are we constantly looking to 
the indwelling Christ? That self is worthy of 
all distrust, and Christ worthy of all trust, we 
know. But are we dving it? Has ‘“‘Apart from 
Me ye can do nothing” become a part of our 
life as well as of our creed? “It is the Spirit 
that guéckeneth (maketh alive), the flesh profiteth 
nothing.” Only the Spirit can make alive ; only 
the Spirit can beget men and women from the 
dead. Words spoken, prayers uttered, acts 
done in the energy of self alone, have no power 
of spiritual germination. If this is true, how 
many of our works are ‘‘dead works?” Except 
the Spirit speak through us, pray through us, 
work through us, there will be no guéckening in 
those about us. The sermon delivered in pride 
of intellect, or rush of mere human eloquence, 
may excite the intellect, arouse admiration, or 
stir emotion, but it cannot transmtt life. And 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 108 


naught but life can beget life, for “‘It is THE 
SPrrRIT THAT QUICKENETH.” ‘‘I do not often 
have to reproach myself for failure to serve,but 
I do often, for serving without anointing,” said 
a noted Christian worker. Ministry without the 
Spirit, of what value is it¢ The answer is ever 
the same,—‘‘the flesh profiteth nothing,” and 
proves how solemn is our responsibility to live 
the abiding life; the life of constant distrust of 
self, and constant dependence upon, and drawing 
from, the indwelling Spirit. 

The necessity of such an abiding life may be 
illustrated in an object-lesson of every-day ob- 
servation. There are two systems of running 
electric cars to-day. By one, power is laid up 
in storage batteries, of amount sufficient to run 
the cars a definite number of hours, or miles. 
Such batteries, when once charged, become for the 
while independent sources of power and light, 
and the car is itself a potential, self-propelling 
agent, needing no aid from without. But there 
is another, the trolley, system which differs 
wholly from the first named. In this the car is 
a dead, helpless thing, with no power whatever 
of self-propulsion. But above it runs the slen- 
der steel cable, thrilling with the life that con- 
stantly pulsates through it from the distant 
power-house. The instant the helpless car 
reaches up and touches that overhead current, it 
becomes instinct with life, power, and motion. 
Now, it is not zts own life and power, but an- 
other’s, and the moment it ceases its touch upon 


104 SHCRET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


the “‘live” wire,that moment it becomes the sane 
helpless, motionless mass. Its continuance/in 
the place of power depends wholly upon its con- 
stancy of contact. The lesson is obvious. Even 
so must the children of God keep in constant, 
momentary, unceasing touch with Jesus Christ, 
if they would know the continuous manifestation 
of the Holy Spirit. For God does not fill them 
on thestorage-battery, buton the trolley principle. 
He does not charge them with independent power, 
but unites them in dependent faith to Jesus 
Christ who is so charged. It is Christ (Acts 
ii. 83) who received of the Father the promise 
of the Holy Ghost; and it is Christ who “ hath 
poured forth this which yesee andhear.” Itis by 
virtue of our union with Christ, then, that we have 
received the gift of the Holy Ghost. And it is 
only as we abide in Him: as we press closer and 
closer to Him: as we daily draw our life from 
Him by communion, and prayer, and continuous 
looking to Him, that we know the constant mani- 
festation of the Spirit. God thus does not fill 
us as we might filla pail, with a supply independ- 
ent of, and separate from, the fountain. He fills 
us as the branch is filled from the vine, by union 
with it, and duily, hourly, drawing upon it, for 
every whit of its supply. And so he who looks 
to Jesus constantly will not lack blessings and 
baptisms, but he who looks to blessings and bap- 
tisms will often lose hold upon Jesus. The Lord 
wills to keep us in this place of dependence. 
He will not so fill us with the Spirit as that we 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 105 


may run for a year, a month, or a day alone. 
To so do would be to make us independent of 
Christ: fill us with self-reliance: puff us up with 
pride: shatter faith, the very foundation of the 
abiding life: and wreck our life of fruit-bearing 
in Him. Nay, beloved, our spiritual life is not 
our own, but drawn from another. Self-depend- 
ence means barrenness; Christ-dependence brings 
fuliness. ‘*Ye ARE DEAD AND YOUR LIFE IS HID 
WITH CHRIST INGop.” Justas, hid in the heart 
of the city, there are great dynamos throbbing 
with a wondrous life which they send forth to 
hundreds of helpless, waiting cars, so, hid in God, 
is divine life which He, the Father, pours out 
through the Son. He who abideth in Him will 
always be fruitful and full; he who essays to 
live in his own past blessings, and experiences, 
will soon deplore his barrenness and emptiness, 

Note well here that this Abiding is not a term 
of standing, but of state. It does not precede 
salvation, it presumes it. A man in Christ has 
the Spirit in virtue of his wnzon,; but many 
a man in Christ loses the manifestation of the 
Spirit through failure of communion. Many a 
Christian is right in standing, but wrong in 
state ; sure of salvation, but slack in walk, and 
communion. In such, barrenness of life and 
powerlessness in service indicate not lost salva- 
tion in Christ, but lost fellowship with Christ ; 
not lost justification, but lost manifestation ; not 
loss of saving faith, but loss of abiding faith in 
the sense already used. 


106 SHORET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATICN. 


- The simple thought then of this faith of Abid- 
ing is that of @ constant LooKine To Jesus for 
our spiritual life. These three words, LOOKING 
TO Jesus, picture perfectly the posture of the 
soul that is abiding in Christ. The moon keeps 
lookeng to the sun, for every gleam of her re- 
flected radiance; the branch keeps looking to the 
vine, for every whit of its life and fruitage ; the 
drinking fountain keeps looking to the supplying 
reservoir, for every drop of water it is to pour 
out to its thirsting visitors; the arc light keeps 
looking to the great dynamo, for every ray of the 
stream of light with which it floods the midnight 
darkness. Even so the child of God who would 
master the final secret of the Holy Ghost, the 
secret of His constant manifestation, must keep 
looking to Jesus, moment by moment, until such 
abiding ia faith becomes the constant attitude of 
his soul. It may be, yea, it will be difficult, at 
first. To incarnate this principle of looking to 
Christ alone in every detail of our lives means 
much to us all. To silence theclamor of fleshly 
voices ; to lean not upon the fleshly understand- 
ing ; to quell the energy of fleshly haste ; to dis- 
trust all plans not borne in or from prayer; to 
lay the hand of strong restraint upon every im- 
pulse, until it has been proven, by prayerful 
waiting, to be of God; to not only say ‘‘ no con- 
fidence ” in the flesh, but to Zéve no confidence ” 
is an attitude not attained with ease, and at a 
single bound. But it shall be ours; Jesus has 
commanded it (John xv. 4), and all his com- 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 107 


mands are enablings. And as out of our very 
failures to abide, the deep need of abiding be- 
comes more manifest, we shall, even as we look 
to him for the power to abide, come at length 
to it. Andthen, really accepting and practicing 
our own helplessness,to look to Jesus for strength 
and find it; to look to Him for guidance, and 
see with our own eyes the wondrous ways in 
which he leads; to look to Him for anointing, 
and to be as conscious of the Spirit’s gracious 
presence as we are of our own identity; to look 
to Him for fruit-bearing, and be astonished at 
the fruitage He can bear through such branches 
as we are—how precious is all this fruitage of 
the Abiding life ! 

Beloved, are we so dissatisfied with self as to 
feel the supreme need of Christ slone? Do we 
realize that in ourselves we are dead men and 
women? The very fact that a man must be 
born again;—-do we realize this to be in iiself 
the most tremendous indictment against, and 
proof of the utter worthlessness of, our own 
natural self-life, that a holy God could ever ar- 
ray against us? Have we accepted the logical 
consequences of regeneration, in their bearing on 
holy living ? Do we realize our need of living 
in God, as well as being born of God? Are we 
conscious of our need of Abiding? Are we 
‘‘ following ufter,” Abiding ¢ Surely its reward 
is rich, for He Himself hath said, ‘*absde in Me 
and I in you i” 


108 


Abiding. 


ee 


‘ K J & have seen the truth of abiding, on the 
faith side of it. Wehave seen how the 


believer must keep looking to Christ, 
day by day, for his spiritual life: must keep in 
constant, hourly touch with Him: must by 2 
life of prayer, communion, and trust keep mo- 
mentarily drawing upon Him “in whom dwell- 
eth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” But, 
as we have seen, ‘‘he that keepeth His command- 
ments,” he it is that ad¢deth in Him. Abiding 
is the keeping of His commandments. There is 
more than one. There is not only ‘‘believing in 
the name of His Son Jesus Christ,” but “love 
one another :” not only Farra but Love. (I. 
John iii. 23.) Hence abiding is not only com- 
munion, but ministry : not only inflow, but out- 
flow : not only an attitude toward God, but also 
toward men : not only looking to Jesus,but loving 
others. He, therefore, who would live the abiding 
life in all its fullness and symmetry, and know 
the manifestation of Christ which attaches to it, 
needs not only to be constantly drawing by faith 
upon the fullness of Jesus, for His daily walk 
and life, but needs also to be CONSTANTLY LOV- 


‘ABIDING IN CHRIST. 109 


ING OTHERS INSTEAD OF LOVING SELF. That the 
abiding manifestation of the Spirit of God can be 
only to those who not only live the life of faith, 
but the life of constant love, is founded on the 
very NATURE OF Gop. For 

1. God who ts love—love of others—can mani- 
fest Himself only to those who are also willing to 
love others. God is Love. We see Him as Love 
in the declaration of His Word. ‘‘ God is Love 
and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.” 
‘¢ He that loveth not knoweth not God.” “I 
have loved thee with an everlasting love.” 
‘ Having loved His own, He loved them unto 
the end.” ‘‘As the Father hath loved Me, even 
so have I loved you.” ‘‘ God so loved the world 
that He gave His only begotten Son.” We see 
it in God the Father, planning from the eternal 
ages for the salvation of men. We see it in 
God the Son, as He poured out His life in un- 
wearying ministry for the souls and bodies of 
men: as His heart agonized in compassion for 
the multitudes, like sheep without a shepherd : as 
He endured with majestic patience the taunts and 
gibes at the judgment scene: as He bowed in 
agony under the bloody blows of the scourge: 
as, at the last, in His own body bearing our sins 
on the tree, His dying breath was spent in plain- 
tive prayer for His murderers. We see, too, 
God the Spirit to be Love. How tender in 
pleading with men ! How gentle in rebuke! How 
tireless and patient under resistance! How loath 
to leave, though flouted and scorned ! How quick 


110 SHORET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


to forgive the crimson sins and remorseful fol- 
lies of the vanished years of a wasted life! Yea, 
the Father, who gave His only begotten, to send 
salvation: the Son, who bled upon a felon’s cross 
to bring salvation; and the Spirit, who, for 
thousands of years, has yearned over,and wrought 
with men to apply salvation—these three are 
one God of eternal, self-sacrificing, changeless, 
quenchless Love—LovE OF OTHERS. 

lence the very nature of God whichis Love 
—love of others—requires for its manifestation a 
life which ts willing to love as He loves—love not 
self, but others. The only way to secure the 
manifestation of the electric current, is to supply 
the steel, or copper wire, or other conductor 
which its nature demands. Even so, the only 
way to secure an abiding manifestation of God 
in us is to supply the conductor which His 
nature demands, in a life which is yielded forever 
to love others even as He loves. The life of a 
child of God, so yielded to live out the great 
command ‘‘Zove one another,” is as much a 
conductor for the manifestation of the God of 
Love, as the metal wire is for the manifestation 
of electric force. For this is the law of the 
Spirit’s activity ; it is the only line along which 
He will operate. Who would expect that Spirit 
to manifest Himself through a murderous, or a 
sensual, life? Neither can He manifest Himself 
through a life whose ruling principle is love of 
self, for He ts utterly unselfish. Therefore, when 
Jesus Christ states clearly that the manifestation 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 11 


of God is to ‘Shim who keepeth His command- 
ments,” and then says, ‘‘ Ziis is my command- 
ment, that ye love one another even as I have 
loved you,” He makes the manifestation of God 
in the Spirit a logical necessity to him who is 
willing to shift the center of his life from love of 
self, to love of others,and a logical impossibility 
to him who is not willing so to do, 

9. Hencethat child of God will have the fullest 
manifestation of God in the Spirit,who adopts as 
the deliberate purpose and principle of has life, 
THE LOVE OF OTHERS instead of THE LOVE OF 
Ser. This is the law through which the Spirit 
acts, and if he would have the manifestation of 
that Spirit he must deliberately accept this law 
as the law of his new life. True, this law of 
love is the exact opposite of the law that all his 
lifetime has been controlling him. But that is 
the very point! He needs a different law of ac- 
tion (‘“‘a NEW commandment I give unto you ”) 
because he is now yielding himself to a different 
life, a new life, the life of the Spirit. And so 
when Christ gives us a new nature, He gives us 
anew commandment. When He gives us a new 
life, He gives us a new law of manifestation 
adapted to that life. And since the new nature 
is the deadly foe and the exact opposite of the 
old, we would expect that the law of its manifes- 
tation would be the exact opposite of the law of 
the old. Hence the believer who desires the 
manifestation of the Spirit must accept for the 
government and regulation of his life a new 


118 SHEORET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTA TION. 


principle, totally different from that which has 
shaped almost every act of his past life; the prin- 
ciple of lowing others instead of loving Self. And 
what a far-reaching, heart-searching, breath- 
taking change this is! To cease to grasp all, and 
begin to give all; to cease to seek all, and begin 
to surrender all; to cease accenting ‘‘ take care 
of number one,” and begin to accent ‘let every 
man care for the things of others” ; to no longer 
seek the high place, but the lowly one; to aim 
now to minister, instead of to be ministered 
unto; to no longer seek, but shun the praise of 
men ; to no longer save the life, but lose it for 
others ; to no longer lay up, enjoy, and be at 
ease, but to suffer, and spend, and be spent for 
Christ Himself—all this is a complete reversal 
of the deep-rooted, all-controlling principle of 
the natural human heart, the principle of self- 
love. To the world the mere suggestion of such 
a thing is astounding! That a man should de- 
liberately renounce all self-seeking, self-praise ; 
renounce his gaining, grasping, dreaming, striv- 
ing, toiling and scheming for self ; and as delib- 
erately give himself to seek, strive, toil, suffer, 
Sicrifice, plan, plead, pray and live for others— 
this is something the natural man will not re- 
ceive. Itismonstrous, impracticable, incredible, 
suicidal! But, beloved, this is exactly what 
Jesus Christ did, and exactly what you and I 
must do to know the manifestation of Ze life 
within us. As surely as love of self is the first 
law of nature, is love of others the first law of 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 113 


God. Astonishing, sweeping, and destructive of 
every self-interest as the law of Love is, yet he 
who yields to it will know God as he never else 
can know Him. He will be most filled with the 
New Life who yields most fully to the New Com- 
mandment. This New commandment is the su- 
preme expression of God’s will for our earthly 
walk. He who yields to it reverses the motive 
principle of his being. But he also reverses the 
whole current of manifestation. He who once 
knew the self-life in its fullness, comes to know, 
as never before, the fullness of the Christ-life. 

3. He, who would know the abiding manifesta- 
tion of God, needs to ABIDE in Love. We need 
not only to accept this great commandment as 
the rule of our life, but need to carry it into our 
daily life in actual practice. The act of surren- 
der to do God’s will of Love is not enough, un- 
less it is followed by a daily, hourly doing of 
that greatest command. And the manifestation 
of His presence and love, which accompanies 
surrender, will fail of continuousness, if we do 
not daily live that which we yield ourselves to 
live—the love-life of God. Hence, the need of 
abiding in Love. For ‘*he that abideth in love, 
abideth in God, and God abideth in him.” (I. 
John. iv. 16, R. V.) Zo abide in Love ts to in- 
carnate the great law of Love of others into every 
detail of our daily life. Not only must the 
self-life be renounced, by a solemn definite act 
but the hadct of selfishness must be replaced 
by the habit of Love. We are to practice the 


114 SHORET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


new commandment in everything, ‘‘ following 
after Love,” as Paul says, until it becomes the 
steadfast law of our being, in all its details. We 
are to make ‘‘LOVE ONE ANOTHER” the touch- 
stone by which to test every thought, word, and 
deed of our daily lives, until allare brought into 
conformity to the law which was supreme in 
the life of Jesus Christ Himself. The rebuke 
you administered yesterday to a brother in 
Christ, was it done in love, or vexation? The 
counsel you gave, was it proffered in love, or 
pride of opinion? The meeting you led, the 
address you made, were they in love,—to help 
others—or to add to your own reputation? The 
money you gave, was it in love to the lost—or 
in pride, and self-esteem? The remarks you 
make about others, are they in love? The 
thoughts you cherish in your secret heart con- 
cerning them—are they, too, fullof love? Your’ 
giving, spending, ministering; your praying, 
and purposing, are they all in love? This is 
the supreme test of every detail of your life, by 
which you may know whether it is ‘‘God that 
worketh in you,” or Self. And how quickly 
that abiding in love becomes a condition of the 
manifestation of the Spirit! Let a day be spent in 
this attitude of love to others, instead of love of 
self. Let the words be kind and gentle; the acts 
helpful, unselfish,and considerate; the hours filled 
with loving, unselfish ministry; and the heart 
the abode of sympathetic, kindly thought. That 
day is a day of blessing, and the consciousness of 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 115 


the Spirit’s blessed presence is inthe heart. But 
let the words be harsh : the thoughts envious or 
spiteful: the acts selfish: the hours filled with 
self-seeking instead of self-forgetfulness: and 
who does not know the conscious shadowing of 
God’s presence, the conscious grieving of the 
Spirit in such days and hours? In the grain 
elevators of the West are different compart- 
ments for the various grains. Open one spout, 
and the golden corn manifests itself in a rich 
outflowing stream. Open another, leading to a 
different chamber, and the amber wheat pours 
forth in like unceasing stream. Open others, and 
the oats, or barley, or rye will severally flow 
forth according as the respective channels to each 
are tapped. Now, within us dwell the Spirit and 
the flesh: the God-nature which is Love, and 
the old nature, which is Selfish. The moment 
we do an act, speak a word, think a thought zn 
love, God, who zs love, manifests Himself. But 
the moment we speak in harshness, act in selfish- 
ness, and think in envy, hatred, or spite, the 
Flesh manifests itself. The law is as certain, 
simple, and inexorable as the law by which the 
kind of grain manifested depends upon the specific 
channel which is thrown open. If we yield to 
Love: will to love: incarnate Love: abide in 
Love, we shall surely be blessed with the con- 
scious manifestation of the God who is Love, 
for we have opened the channel through which 
the Spirit of Love is bound to flow forth. 
But if our words are bitter: our thoughts and 


116 SEORET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


aims constantly centered in self: our actions 
purely selfish: our lives self-centered, and love- 
less, then the manifestation of the Flesh, the 
self-life, the old nature is just as certain and 
inevitable as the manifestation of the Spirit to 
him who walks in love. Christ cannot manifest 
Himself through a life of murder or theft, that 
is self-evident. But is it equally evident to us 
that Christ cannot manifest Himself through 
any act that is selfish or wn-Christlike? Every 
root of bitterness, every yielding to selfish- 
ness, every harsh judgment in our daily walk 
must, and does, of necessity, break Christ’s 
communion with us. How zealous and careful 
should we be then to ABIDE IN LovE! Let 
every act be done in love to others. Shun a 
selfish act as you would a sensual one. Shrink 
from an unloving thought or suggestion as you 
would from the hiss of a serpent. Eschew 
hasty, bitter words as you would poisoned darts 
or daggers. Realize—what so astounds the nat- 
ural heart—that God loves, regardless of His 
treatment by others: ‘‘ He is kind to the un- 
thankful and the evil.” Even so should we. 
Wherefore, if some grievous wrong, insult, or 
unkindness goads you from your attitude of love, 
justify it not, but hasten to confess, and find 
forgiveness from Him who prayed for those 
who murdered Him, as well as for those who 
loved Him. 

Note well here that THE sUPREME EXPRESSION 
oF LovE IS MINISTRY, even unto sacrifice and 


ABIDING IN OHRIST. 117 


death. Love is not mere sentiment : mere emo- 
tional outflow. True, it must first be in the 
heart, whose attitude is to be steadily one of love 
for others. But thence it flows forth in minis- 
try, in service, in sacrifice for others. ‘* Little 
children let us love in DEED and in truth,” says 
John. ‘* Hereby perceive we the love of God 
because He laid down His life for us.” (1. John 
iii. 16.) God so loved that He gave, He served, 
He died, for the lost world. This is the test of 
Love. The inevitable outcome of the love-life 
within, is ministry and service without. Truo 
love must minister : the love of Christ constrains 
it so todo. Yet beit remembered that they who 
lie upon beds of suffering and helplessness,may, 
in the secret outgoings of their hearts, and in the 
ministry of prayer for others, live the love-life 
as truly as those who minister by hand, tongue, 
or pen. For asin giving, so it is here, that ‘ if 
there be first a willing mind, it is accepted, ac- 
cording to that aman hath, and not according 
to that he hath not.” 

4. Faith ts the gateway of communion with 
God ; Love the gateway of ministry to men. He 
who keeps them both constantly open has learned 
to abide in Christ. The believer is the temple of 
the Holy Ghost. That temple is double-gated. 
Faith is the gateway open Godward; Love is 
the gateway open manward. Through Faith 
the divine life, so to speak, flows in to us; 
through Love it flows out to others. Faith is 
the channel of communion with God ; Love the 


118 SHORET.OF CONSTAN1 MANIFESTATION. 


channel of ministry to men. God desires not 
only to pour His life znzo us through Faith, but 
through us to others, through Love. The Spirit 
not only wants us to let Him zn, but also to let 
Him ouétoothers. Itis not enough for us simply 
to receive the Holy Spirit. It is not enough to 
have Him indwelling in us. It is not enough to 
have His love, peace, and power zn ourselves, and 
for ourselves only. There is some one else in the 
universe besides God, the giver of the Holy 
Spirit, and us, the recipients. There is an un- 
saved, dying, perishing world, whom He loves 
even as He loved us. Unless they see Christ 
through us, they willneversee Him ; unless they 
hear of Him through us, they will die in dark- 
ness; unless He touches them through us, they 
will never know the touch of His lifeand power. 
When He walked the earth He was constantly 
pouring out His own love-life in sacrifice, min- 
istry, and blessing to all about Him. Now, He 
is no “‘longer in the world,” but we are in the 
world as members of His body, branches of 
Him, the living Vine, and He longs to continue 
pouring forth that life through ws. Faith is 
thus the channel of divine inflow: Love the 
channel of divine outflow. Through Faith God 
has all chance to work zm us; through Love all 
opportunity to work through us. ‘* Faith which 
WORKETH THROUGH Love,” is the way Paul puts 
it in Gal. v. 6. Faith looking hourly to Jesus, 
constantly receiving His inpouring life, as con- 
stantly pours it out through Love, the door kept 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 119 


open toward the perishing. He abides in Christ 
who keeps both these doors constantly open. 
Neither dares to be shut. To close the door of 
faith is to have the inner man grow weak for 
lack of communion ; to close the door of love is 
to have him grow weak for lack of ministry. 
Thus the believer is « channel for the Spirit who 
is, in figure, a stream (John vii. 38). ‘‘OuT oF 
him shall flow rivers of Living water.... this 
spake He of the Spirit which they .... should 
RECEIVE.” That which has been received is to 
flow out. A good channel is always receiving, 
always full, and always outflowing. To bea 
good channel one needs to keep constantly open 
at the point of inflow, and the point of outflow. 
Therefore these two gatewaysof Faith and Love 
must both be kept constantly open. Through 
Faith, the gateway open Godward, as it were, 
we constantly receive the divine life in commun- 
ion. Through Love, the gateway, opens man- 
ward, we constantly give out the divine life in 
ministry and service. The channel which shuts 
one gate ceases to be achannel. For inflow 
without outflow means stagnation; and outflow 
without inflow means emptiness. We dare not 
cease from Faith; we dare not relax in Love. 
We must pass from the inflow of Communion to 
the outflow of Service; and back again from the 
outgiving of Service to the replenishment of 
Communion. He who shuts either the gate of 
Communion or the gate of Ministry, writes over 
his life, ‘*‘ Vo thoroughfare”; but he has no 


120 SHORET OF CONSTANT MANIFESTATION. 


sooner done this than the Spirit, with invisible 
hand, writes over that same life, ‘‘ Wo abiding.” 
Not realizing that both are needed to form a 
rounded, symmetrical, complete life in Christ, 
men have tried to divorce them ; essayed to live 
one without the other. Bealeane that apart 
from Christ they could do nothing ; ; Seeing the 
need of close, constant communion with Him; 
conscious of the blessing, and power of the life 
of prayer, they have given themselves wholly to 
the Faith side of the abiding life. They have 
retired from the world with its sin and follies ; 
they have hidden themselves in the seclusion of 
cell and cloister ; they have given themselves to 
prayer, meditation and communion. Put when 
God revealed Himself to them through the life 
of communion, instead of opening the door of 
Love, applying themselves to ministry,and giving 
out spiritual blessing and life to those in need, 
they essayed to keep to themselves the Life which 
is given for all men. Then came the morbid, 
unnatural, unhealthful type of life that dwelt in 
the siondbtervs and the hermit’s cell, and degen- 
erated, when unaccompanied by We every-day 
ministry of love, into spiritual death and bar- 
renness. Christ Himself could not live such a 
life, but when ‘‘anointed by the Holy Ghost, 
He went about doing good.” The Faith side of 
the abiding life is absolutely essential. We must 
realize our own spiritual deadness ; we must look 
to Jesus constantly; we must, hour by hour,draw 
upon His divine life. But ‘‘ Faith without works 


ABIDING IN CHRIST. 121 


is dead ;” inflow without outflow is stagnation ; 
communion without ministry is one-sidedness. 
Others there are who give themselves wholly 
to Christian service and activities. Their life is 
one continual round of meetings, societies, con- 
ventions, addresses, and services, without num- 
ber. To them hours of prayer are an unknown 
factor ; communion is a meaningless term ; wait- 
ing on God a waste of precious time; the guid- 
ance of the Spirit, and the life of Trust are sound 
without significance. Yet these lives, with all 
their busyness, lack a radical something. There 
is fret and fume; worry and anxiety; conscious 
lack of quickening power in service ; absence of 
joy, peace, and blessing in the lives they are liv- 
ing with such intensity. Itis but the same shield 
viewed from the obverse side. Works wrought 
in our own might are but dead works; the cham- 
ber of prayer is the only true power- house ; 
ministry, without anointing, is lifeless ; we must 
touch Christ before we touch men; we can not 
pour out if we have not received from Him. 
One touch of a live wire will thrill a man through 
and through, but you may touch him all day 
with a dead one and never quicken him. Faith 
without ministry is dead ; ministry without faith 
—which is ministry apart from Christ—is de- 
clared by Christ himself to be NorHinc. He 
then who continuously lives out these two great 
commandments of Christ; He who constantly 
keeps open these two doors of Faith and Love; 
he who thus becomes the THOROUGHFARE of 


122. SHORET OF OONSTANT MANIFESTATION 


the Holy Spirit—has learned the final secret of 
the Spirit—the secret of the abiding life.— 
WHEREFORE, TO ABIDE IN CHRIST IS TO LIVE A 
LIFE OF CONSTANT I'aira CHRIST-WARD, AND 
CONSTANT LOVE MAN-WARD. 

Beloved, have we learned this final secret of 
the Holy Ghost? Are we living the Abiding 
Life? Do we realize, on the one hand,our help- 
less, hourly dependence upon Jesus Christ as 
the only fullness of life for us?. Are we learn- 
ing the lesson of looking to Him in ail things? 
Has it become the habitual attitude of our 
lives? Are we slow to speak, to plan, to act, 
until we have been in touch and counsel with 
Him? Are we not only pouring out our lives 
for Him, but—what is still more important— 
_ are we holding ourselves in such an attitude that 
He can pour out Wis life through us? In short 
are we remaining, staying, living, ABIDING, IN 
Faitn? Furthermore do we realize that He is 
Love—/ove of orHERS? That He wants us to be 
like Him and therefore says ‘A new command- 
ment I give unto you that YE love ONE ANOTHER 
even as I have loved you?” Have we given up 
our self-love then, and made it the supreme pur- 
pose of our lives to dove orHEeRS? And, if so, 
are we /wing it? Are we asking ourselves day 
by day and hour after hour :”—Did I do this in 
love of others: did I plan this in love: did I 
speak this in love: did I give, or minister or 
serve in love; love of others?” Do we throttle 
every harsh word, resent every selfish thought, 


ABIDING IN OHRIST. 128 


refuse every selfish act because each violates the 
great love-law of our new life? Do we understand 
that this Love means practical, constant, life- 
long ministry and service for others, even as He 
served when on earth? Are we keeping both com- 
mandments continuously? Are both gates open? 
Are our quiet hours given to communion ! 
And our busy ones to ministering in Love, 
however humble and common-place the things 
we do may seem? Are we so constantly looking 
to Him, and so busy in loving others, that we are 
beginning to understand, just a litle, that won- 
derful sentence ‘*‘ It is no longer I that live, but 
Christ that liveth in me?” Have we thus tasted 
of Abiding? Are we following after Abiding? If 
so let us rejoice. For it is not only ours in 
promise, and ours in command, but it is to be 
ours in actual, conscious experience, as His own 
blessed Word declares :—‘' And hereby Wis KNOW 
that He ABIDETH tn vs BY THE SprriT which He 
hath gwen us.” 


For prayerful distribution this book, | 

| bound in neat, paper cover, may be | 

: had free by addressing the Publisher, 
Box 216, Harrisburg, Pa, 


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